


Were the World Ours

by phansomedevil



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Angst, Biphobia, Fantasy, Fluff, High School, Homophobia, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Theatre, there will be magic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2016-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-14 11:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 36,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4562061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phansomedevil/pseuds/phansomedevil
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Year ten theatre nerd Dan finally musters up the courage to try out for his school’s production of "Midsummer Night’s Dream." But who's the year twelve unknown that’s been mysteriously cast as Puck? </p><p>Inspired by the movie "Were the World Mine."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Last Call

Dan was pretty sure his priorities were fucked to hell.  He figured this because he hadn’t spent all yesterday evening doing Geometry problem sets or writing an essay on the French Revolution or even getting a good night’s rest. Instead, he’d spent the night memorizing Shakespeare.

It didn’t take him all night, of course. Technically, he wasn’t even required to have it memorized. He knew this because he’d read over the audition notice approximately two hundred and twenty-six times, searching for fine print that didn’t actually exist. Nevertheless, he’d memorized a monologue and two of the more memorable scenes in the second act. He wanted to be prepared. He wanted to impress them. 

But as soon as he’d decided that bed was probably a good idea his mind started going around in circles about whether impressing them was possible in the slightest and who was he even kidding himself and what if everything went bad again. Needless to say, he hadn’t slept much.

Or he hadn’t slept much in his bed. His body had been perfectly willing to fall asleep on his desk during periods one through three, and on a music room piano bench during lunch break. Dan had set a phone alarm, he was sure of it. He definitely had, since his audition was scheduled for the ten-minute gap between lunch and his next class. It was only when students starting filing into the music room, giggling and giving him side-eye, that he realized his mistake. He had jolted up and was now dashing full-speed toward the auditorium, throwing out curses in a trail behind him. Dan really wished his full-speed were faster. 

“Last call!” The shouting came from just around the corner. “Last call for drama auditions!” 

“Wait!” Dan rasped out, skidding to a stop in front of the open auditorium doors. He braced his hands on his knees, nearly doubled over in his body’s frantic search for breath. From this angle, he was staring at a woman’s maroon velvet pumps. More of the woman was revealed to him as he slowly came to standing – her knobby knees under the hem of a flowing skirt, a colorful sweater over a neat button-down blouse, crossed arms and ginger hair in a twist and one raised, penciled-in eyebrow. Dan knew Ms. Alexis, the drama teacher and resident theatre director, but she didn’t know him.

“Auditioning for  _Midsummer_?”

“Yes!” he exclaimed, still huffing, “Yes – sorry I’m late.”

Ms. Alexis shifted on her heels, burrowing deeper into her heavy sweater.  Feeling her gaze steady on him, Dan took the moment to be embarrassed about his too-loose tie and the shirttails hanging out the back of his trousers.

“Right, well, you nearly missed me, but – seeing as you’re here now, I think we can hold the auditorium for just a few minutes longer.” She gave him a tight smile. “You’ll be my last for the day, mister–?”

“Howell,” he answered shortly. “Dan. And thank you. I really appreciate it.”  

Ms. Alexis nodded. “Well, come in then, Dan. Just close the door behind you and you can step up on the stage and read. You’ll find a selection of sides on the table. Did you have any particular roles in mind?”

Dan had dumped his messenger bag on one of the front row chairs, and was pulling out his marked-up copy of the play. “Um…” He hesitated. What right had he to answer that question honestly? His ego had been beaten into submission by the fact that he was only a year ten, auditioning for his new school’s play after a year’s worth of being too scared to take the chance again. Personal hang-ups aside, he wasn’t about to forget that your average drama kid was a pack animal with a particular sensitivity to hierarchy. They were a unique breed of human that equally terrified and intrigued him. Never mind that he was probably one of them. “Not really. I’ll go for whatever. I mean – I’m just happy to get involved.” 

“Why don’t you read for Lysander?” Ms. Alexis’s smile had grown kinder. “Act two, scene two, top of the page.”

As he mounted the stairs to the stage, flipping through his book, Dan was quietly pleased. He’d practiced this bit.

“Ah – I see you have a copy already.”

“Right, yeah,” Dan laughed a little nervously, lifting up his battered edition as if to wave. “It’s, uh, probably one of my favorites.”

“That’s wonderful,” said Ms. Alexis. She gestured at him with a bangle-jingling wrist. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Dan nodded, closed his eyes, and took a breath.

“Oh, take the sense – sweet – of my innocence…”

His heart had been fluttering in his chest, his stomach jumping, for all of the five minutes prior to this moment.  _“Love takes the meaning in love’s conference.”_  But he was okay now. His limbs were electric; his voice carried through the room.  _“I mean, that my heart unto yours is knit, so that but one heart we can make of it.”_ The play in his hand was open to the proper page, just in case, but he didn’t need to look.  He knew this.  _“Two bosoms…interchained with an oath.”_ God, he’d missed this.

 _“So then two bosoms and a single troth.”_  This feeling of connection through language, of taking an amalgamation of symbols on paper and breathing through it with voice and body until it came to life.  _“Then by your side no bed-room me deny.”_  He’d done theater all through secondary school, up until he’d transferred. It was all small-scale, kiddie stuff, but it was enough to spark the drive and the love that he figured was invaluable to any performer. Auditions were terrible, as a rule, but this he didn’t mind. This was worth the sleeplessness and the anxiousness and the teetering probability of failure. In this moment, Dan was glad he’d swallowed the fear.

“…for lying so, Hermia, I do not lie.”

 At the best of times, the end of a performance brought applause. This time, the last period of Dan’s monologue was followed by silence, apart from the furious scratching of pen on paper. His nervousness returned as quick as it had left.

“Very well. Let’s carry on to act three, scene two – if you wouldn’t mind terribly, dear.”

**

 If anything were worse than auditions, it was cast list day. Callbacks were better than the both of them, thought not by much, and those had happened two days ago.

 Dan had been one of three potential Lysanders reading with three potential Hermias, two Helenas, and four Demetriuses. He knew it was pointless to start with the opinions at this stage, but he couldn’t help hoping that it would be Analise who snagged Hermia.

 She was shy; she stumbled on her lines more than Brigit and she certainly wasn’t drama kid royalty like Carrie, a year twelve who’d played the lead in every show Dan had seen in his year there. But Analise had pretty green-gray eyes and sat next to him in English. She laughed at his jokes on those rare occasions he found the courage to make them, and when he’d forgotten his copy of  _Moby Dick_  last Tuesday, she’d let him share hers. He’d clicked with Analise at callbacks more than any of the others. They fed off of each other, quickly building up banter, and Dan had finished their read feeling pleasantly buzzed.

 Then again, Carrie had been starring opposite Chris –another Lysander contender – for two years running, and Ms. Alexis had been wiping away tears of laughter after their read. Chris was one of the first people Dan had befriended at the school. To be honest, he was a sizable chunk of the reason Dan had decided to try out. A few weeks into their friendship, Dan had made the mistake of telling him about that time he’d gone to put his arm around Sandy in their cardboard convertible and accidently punched her in the face. Chris, a drama kid who perked up at the smell of new blood, hadn’t stopped propositioning him ever since.

 The cast list was supposed to be posted during lunch, and this was the single longest day of Dan’s life. His stomach had been turning too much to bother eating, though his best friend Louise probably would’ve forced a sandwich into him if he hadn’t bolted straight for the auditorium. He was lurking. He knew he was lurking, and standing hunched just around the corner from where the list would be posted probably wasn’t doing him any good. It certainly wasn’t making the minutes tick by any faster.

 He saw the double doors rattling, and quickly ducked back behind the corner so Ms. Alexie wouldn’t catch his pathetic self. But the instant he heard the creaking of a hinge and the doors swinging shut, Dan rushed from his hiding place. His eyes scanned the freshly printed page, eager to latch onto a target.

 And there it was. Dan’s heart leaped into his larynx. Somehow, he’d actually done it. A stunned laugh escaped his lips. Analise had gotten it too; he would be playing Lysander opposite her as Hermia. Carrie and Chris, the official Helena and Demetrius, hadn’t exactly relinquished their supremacy, but two year tens in main roles was nothing to scoff at. Dan could feel pride bubbling over beneath his skin. He cheered out a loud “yes!” that he was only self-conscious of in retrospect, after he heard giggling from behind him.

 “Sorry, d’ya mind if I look?”

 Dan spun around to meet startlingly blue eyes and a smile that was amused but hardly mocking.

 “Right. Yeah, sorry – go ahead.” He shuffled aside, shooting a parting glance at his name near the top of the list. Cast list day tended to be an emotional one. Success meant cheering and occasionally tears and disappointment almost definitely meant tears. He looked back at the blue-eyed boy, curious to see which reactionary category he’d fall into.

 Neither, it seemed. The boy’s pointer finger trailed down the list as he calmly skimmed from line to line. Settling near the middle, he blinked his bright eyes.

A small smile lit across his face.

 “So, um, what’d you get?” Dan couldn’t help but ask, from a few paces away. He could’ve smacked himself.

 “I’m, uh –“ The boy glanced back at the list. “Robin Goodfellow?”

 Dan’s mind almost hit a stumbling block on the name before he realized.

 “Wait, so you’re playing Puck, then?”

 “Right – Puck!” The boy exclaimed, nodding in recognition. “That’s the character I got asked to read lines for, anyway. He’s a pretty funny bloke, huh?”

 Somewhere, a bell rang, and more people were pushing and shoving, trying to get to lunch and classes and the list.

“I better be off,” said Phil. He had to speak a bit louder over the din of the hallway. “It was nice meeting you!”

 “Yeah, you too.” Whoever he was, the blue-eyed boy had already disappeared into the crowd. 


	2. Worth the Trouble

“Have you heard of anyone called Phil Lester?” Dan asked Louise the question that had been boiling in his head all day.  He’d never caught the boy’s name, so after his last class ended he’d looked both ways before crossing the hall and checking the list again.

“Can’t say I have,” said Louise, pursing her bubblegum pink lips. The two of them were walking home from school together, as they did most days. They’d probably stop by Starbucks or pick up a pizza on the way. “Is he in our year?”

Definitely the nicest thing about transferring was going to school with Louise. They’d been playmates since Reception, what with living down the road from one another. But before they could take on year seven together, the zones abruptly shifted and, by some twist of fate, the new cut-off line had been drawn halfway between their houses. Dan had been forced to stick out secondary school alone.

“I don’t think so?” Dan sighed. “I ran into him today. By the cast list – he’s playing Puck.”

“Ooo…” She perked up appreciably, waggling an expertly shaped eyebrow at him. “Will he be sexy faerie man, then?”

“Puck’s not exactly a sexy character. He’s, like, ancient…ethereal. He’s this force of nature that won’t be fucked with.”

“I think there’s nothing sexier than a force of nature,” Louise said matter-of-factly.  She nudged her shoulder against his as she walked, grey skirt swishing. “Come on, tell us, was did he look like, this Phil? I bet he was quite fit. Did you have a chat?”

“Christ, Louise, if you’re so interested why don’t you chat him up yourself?” Dan found himself eager to deflect her attention. “I’m sure Jack will be devastated. Or did you forget you were practically married?”

“Now you shush!” she scoffed, her cheeks coloring a shade slightly off from her blush, “We don’t use the m-word.”

“Afraid you’ll scare him off?” said Dan, smirking.

“More afraid I’ll scare myself off, to be perfectly honest. It’s far too early for any of that. All things come in time.”

“Well, all I’m saying is Jack had better make sure no blue-eyed miscreants come to snatch you up in the interim.”

Louise narrowed her eyes at him, a dangerous smile creeping up her face. “So Phil had blue eyes then?”

“Oh for fuck’s sake – ”

“Were they ocean blue or sky blue, do you think?”

“Louise, I barely exchanged ten words with the guy. Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to take a complete inventory of his face.”

“Take a guess, then.”

“I don’t even know why I brought him up in the first place.”

Exaggeratedly, she pouted. “You’re no fun.” 

“That’s me. Daniel ‘No Fun’ Howell. Z-list actor extraordinaire. Coming soon to an eighty-seat school auditorium probably not near you.”

“Come on, Dan. I thought you were excited to be in the play.” Louise would have gotten that impression, considering the fact that he’d practically shouted the news to her after lunch. She’d squealed and hugged him tight around the waist, swearing she’d predicted it all along.

“I am,” he stressed. He shook a hand through his fringe. “I’m just – I want to live up to it, right?”

“You will.”

“I don’t want to fuck up this shot.”

“You really won’t.”

“What if I actually just, you know, suck? Maybe they haven’t figured it out yet, but they could kick me out any time they wanted. They certainly wouldn’t have a hard time replacing me either, with all the year twelves I beat out – who fucking knows how. And what if – Louise, what if everything goes to shit again. I don’t –”

“Dan,” she pinched the arm of his blazer, gently compelling him to a halt on the middle of the pavement. Two streets ahead, he could see the lights on through his living room window; he hadn’t noticed they’d gotten so close. “Listen to me – everything’ll work out. You deserve this. You’ll be so brilliant that the drama club will cast your bust in gold and set up a plaque.”

“Thanks.” Dan cracked a smile. His worries hadn’t been magicked away, but Louise always knew how to ease them. “You’re a good friend.”

She looped her arm through his, ignoring the awkwardness of their height difference. “I am the best friend,” she said. “Let’s go along to mine then. We can figure out how to break the news to mummy dearest.”

* * *

 Despite Louise’s insistence that they plan for every eventuality, Dan had no genuine intention of telling his family he’d been cast in the play.

He’d gone straight upstairs to his bedroom, shouting out a cursory greeting to his mother in the kitchen. She was cooking what smelled like meatloaf. She’d probably be mad that he’d already stuffed himself with leftover pizza and Louise’s ungodly snickerdoodles. Not that he’d let her know that in so much detail; his lack of appetite would tell enough.

Rehearsals were beginning tomorrow afternoon. Dan tried to focus on homework, but he felt like he was balanced on a live wire of anticipation. It was all he could do to not pour over his copy of  _Midsummer_  and continue memorizing, marking up key passages. All that could wait. Hell, he hadn’t even met most of the cast yet.

And Phil, well – Phil didn’t even know his name. In fact, he’d probably be creeped out that Dan had looked up his.  He’d better not mention that until they were officially introduced. That would be helpful. Dan was still no closer to finding out really anything at all about who the blue-eyed guy was. Dan was still struck by how weirdly nonchalant he’d been about the whole business.

God, why did Dan even care? He should be more concerned about his first encounter with Analise tomorrow. Of course they’d talked before, but only casually, and usually about homework. They’d be spending a lot more time together now. Now there was a heap of potential that he would surely fuck up. Dan really hoped he could hold his own among Chris and Carrie and all them. Shit. Maybe he should start marking up the play after all.

“Dan! _Dinner!_ It’ll be cold in a minute!”

“Coming!” He already had his bag half open, so he pulled out the play and tossed it on his bed. He stopped at the door-length mirror for a quick fringe check before heading downstairs.

“Jesus, do I really have to call you a dozen times?” Dan’s mum sighed, as he slid into his dining room chair.

“I only heard you the once!”

“There’s no need to raise your voice.” His dad directed narrowed eyes at him from over the lip of his wine glass.

“Sorry.” He stared down at his plate of meatloaf. Sighing, he picked up his fork and knife.

“So did you have a nice day at school?” Utensils scratched on china. There were few worse sounds. Dan used the excuse of chewing to give away nothing more than a noncommittal hum. “Your brother made junior varsity.”

“Oh. Cool.” The words came out garbled, due to his mouth still being half full of slightly overcooked meat. He swallowed a lump of it, painfully. “Where is he?”

“Over at his little girlfriend’s,” his dad smirked.

“He’s having dinner with Delilah’s parents,” added his mum, with a smile.

“Christ, they’ve only known each other for – what – three weeks?”

“Don’t be rude, she’s a lovely girl,” his mum said. “Maybe you’d have a girlfriend by now if you didn’t talk with your mouth full. And made some effort to be punctual.”

Dan rolled his eyes.

“Your friend Chris phoned earlier.”

“What? What for?” Chris, the periodic third point in he and Louise’s duo, had never been popular with his mother. Louise was a saint, with her poufy A-line skirts and toothy placating grin. Meanwhile, Chris was a bit too flamboyant and made a few too many off-color jokes for his mum’s taste. Flouting the ‘no technology at the table’ mandate, Dan pulled his phone from his pocket. Five texts, three missed calls, and a voice message. That would explain it. Home numbers were the last refuge for the desperate. 

“Phone away, Daniel,” his mum trilled. Her primary forehead wrinkle had asserted itself – never a good sign. “He said something about a play.”

Dan was going to kill him.

“Yeah, I’ll call him back.”

“He wanted to congratulate you. I assumed you might have news to share.”

 “It’s really nothing. Some school production.” Deflect, deflect.

 “Oh. I suppose that’s nice.” His mother would not be deflected. “And did you, erm, do auditions for this production?”

 “That’s usually how shows work, yes.”

 His dad’s glass was empty and stained splotchy purple on the inside. Keeping hold of the stem, he twirled it around thoughtfully on the tablecloth.

 “I thought you were finished with the whole theatre thing,” his dad said. “I mean – it’s been a while. You weren’t in any shows last year, were you?”

 Dan struggled to keep his patience. “I was bored as shit all last year. I didn’t do anything.”

 “Why not look for a part-time job then?”

 “When I said ‘anything,’ I meant something that could be remotely enjoyable.”  

 “Or you could go out for sports?”

 “God, do you even know me?”

 His dad’s lips quirked up; his mum let out a sigh.

 “The point is that your father and I are worried. We aren’t sure if you should be getting involved in all this again. You said yourself that it’s been better since you started at the new school, that the kids have been – kinder.”

 “That’s not gonna happen again.” Dan dropped his silverware with a dull clang. “I don’t want to talk about it. Can I be excused?” 

 “Now hold on just a second,” said his dad, having released the wine glass and latched onto his wife’s hand. “We understand that you like this…performing. That’s fine. Whatever makes you happy. But – is it worth the trouble?”

 “Yes,” said Dan harshly. “Can I  _please_  be excused?”

 “Fine.”

 He stood up immediately, jostling the table.

 “At least tell us what the play is,” his mum exclaimed, as Dan started to make his way from the room. “And put your plate in the sink!”

 Dan did not stick around to give an answer, but called it out from across the room. As he began to mount the stairs, he could hear his parents’ hushed conversation.

  _“Lysander, is that right? And it’s a comedy.”_

_“At least he’ll be paired with a woman, won’t he? That’s something.”_

 “I’m not gay!” Dan shouted back, defeated before he’d even taken up the battle. It’d almost be easier if he were. He shook his head and mumbled, “If that makes a bloody difference…” 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work was originally published on my Tumblr (under the same username).


	3. Faerie Boy

“I don’t like him.”

 Louise looked up at Dan from her textbook. They were seated together on Dan’s bed, her leaning up against the headboard and him sprawled out on his stomach.

 “Sorry honey, you’ve lost me.”

 “Phil,” Dan stressed, lingering on the ‘ul’ sound. “I don’t like him.”

 “Ah, yes, our blue-eyed faerie boy.”

 “He’s not ‘our’ anything.”

 “I take it you’re ready to tell me about rehearsal, then.”

 “I mean –“ Dan scrambled to sit cross-legged opposite her. “It’s not like it went poorly or anything, just – so we were doing our first read-through right?”

 It had all gone off quite well, considering. Dan was always able to breathe a lot easier after that first rehearsal was out of the way.

 “Right…and Phil –“

 “Phil just didn’t care! He kept, like, chatting with people –“

 “So he’s friendly…”

 “And he wouldn’t stop laughing –“

 “Isn’t it a comedy?”

 “I – that isn’t the point. Louise, he knew nothing about the play! The guy was surprised when Bottom turned into a donkey. He kept trading ‘thou’ for ‘thee’ and pronounced ‘Titania’ like Tee-tawn-ya.”

 “You keep talking, but all I’m hearing is ‘I am a pretentious Shakespeare fanboy’.”

 Dan scowled. “I’m not pretentious.”

 “Methinks thee doth protest too much.”

 “Thou.”

 Louise cocked an eyebrow.

 “Shut up,” he grumbled, “Louise, look – he couldn’t even act. He spoke in a goddam monotone the whole read-through.”

 “Maybe he’s just needs some time to warm up,” she suggested.

 Dan shook his head. “I’ve been doing this since I was in diapers, practically. I know the difference between a shy actor and a shit one.” He winced. “Sorry, yeah, I could almost taste the pretentious arsehole there.”

 “Kinky.”

 “Jesus fucking hell, Louise.” He exaggerated a shudder, prodding her calf with a socked foot. “Do you know he’s a year twelve as well? He’s got one foot out the door and he’s never been in a show in his life.”

 “Do you actually know that or –“

 “No, I’m just a massive dick.” Few things came more naturally to Dan than sarcasm. “Phil said so during introductions, with a big smile on his face.”

 “Aw, so he’s excited.”

 “I don’t trust it,” said Dan. “Why did he even try out? Why the hell did they cast him in the first place?”

 Louise reached out with a purple-manicured hand and patted him on the knee.

 “Well, there’s no use thinking it to death now,” she said. “Give it a few days. Maybe faerie boy will surprise you.”

* * *

 Dan gave it a week. Now it wasn’t like the rest of the cast were gearing up for Tony-worthy performances. A lot of them only wanted another notch on their proverbial resume belt, and a fair few more just liked having somewhere friendly to be from three to six every afternoon. Rarely did anyone from Ms. Alexis’s drama crowd harbor unrealistic dreams of doing this professionally, and no one in recent memory had actually succeeded at it. Still, it seemed Phil was hopeless.

 While Dan was thrilled to see the rest of the cast meshing during read-throughs, starting to find those wonderful little moments in the text, he couldn’t help but wince every time Phil uttered a line. If the monotone wasn’t bad enough, the blue-eyed boy had branched out. He spoke in this sort of distant yet over-exaggerated tone, and half a second after each thing he said his face would take to smiling or frowning or looking stern, like his expressions had a lag time. Dan might have laughed if he hadn’t been mortified. He only had to look around their seated circle of actors during Puck’s final monologue, bare witness to the raised eyebrows and subtle nudging, to realize he wasn’t alone in his judgment. He locked eyes with Analise across from him, smirking when she bared her teeth in a grimace.

 God, what had Ms. Alexis seen in this boy? Dan looked toward his teacher – cross-legged under her long beaded skirt – for some sort of answer, but she had a resting poker face that he couldn’t for the life of him decipher. At least the dude playing Peaseblossom could react on cue. And Phil, well, he just couldn’t be bothered. His easy little grins at this or that line often blew up into giggles, which he hid behind his hand. Twice, he interjected the read with a comment, drawing scattered laughter from the group. Twice, Dan glared down at his script with the corners of his mouth twitching. Every stupid interruption only added minutes onto their rehearsal time, Dan told himself.

 It was subtle – and wow, he really had no idea, did he – but Dan was beginning to suspect even Ms. Alexis shared the cast’s concerns. Every time Ms. Alexis gave Phil a note, at about twice the rate of anyone else, she would cock her head and the tiniest crease would form between her eyebrows. She would make various suggestions to him, prodding for god knows what reaction, all to no avail. Dan liked to think he was decent at reading people, and he could feel the undercurrents of frustration growing.

 At that week’s last rehearsal, Ms. Alexis instructed them to be off-book for the first act by Monday in order to begin blocking. Of course Dan already had most of the play memorized, so he tried not to be too smug.

 “Oy! Mate!” Dan had been packing up his things when the hand clapped him on the shoulder. He turned around to see Chris’s easily grinning face.

 “You’ve really been killing it,” Chris continued. “Not that I’m shocked.”

 Dan ducked his head and gave his fringe a self-conscious ruffle. “Oh – thanks! But don’t think that means I forgive you for  _calling my mother_.” 

 Chris waved a dismissive hand. “You’ll be fabulous and mummy’ll get over it. Just thought I’d let you know I’m glad you’ve been inducted into the cult.”

 “Oh, did I miss the blood pact? I’d been meaning to work that into my schedule.”

 “Nah, mate, it’s next Tuesday. After the potluck.” Breaking from his faux-serious face, Chris added, “Me and Carrie were gonna hunt for chips – you should join up.”

 Perfectly on cue, Dan’s stomach rumbled. “Sure. Mind if I text Louise?” He was already extracting his phone from his pocket.

 “More the merrier,” said Chris. His gaze wandered as Dan tapped out a message and pulled his bag across his body. Smirking, he alerted Dan with a nudge of the shoulder. “But you really should be thinking about asking a certain someone.”

 Dan followed Chris’s pointed look, and instantly blanched.

 “Sorry -  _what_?”

 In front of them, Phil Lester was in discussion with Ms. Alexis. His blue eyes were wide with concentration; he brushed away a lock of dark hair that fell in front of them.

 “I see the way you’ve been making eyes at her, you strumpet. Run up and talk to her before she leaves.”

 “Oh.” Dan’s breathing returned to normal. “Oh, right. Yeah.”

 A little behind Phil, in the shadow of the auditorium doorway, Analise was chatting with Carrie. Her bright laugh seemed to ricochet off the walls and tickle the back of Dan’s neck. He glanced back at Chris.

 “Do you think I should, then?”

 Chris gave him a look that could only be described as scathing. He grabbed Dan’s upper arm and tugged.

 “Analise, is it?” Chris confidently pushed his voice into the girls’ circle. “I don’t actually think we’ve been acquainted properly. Which is a  _murderous_  shame because I think you’ll be a brilliant Hermia.”

 Analise’s pale cheeks had colored pink. “That means a lot – thanks, Chris.” Dan almost wanted to yell at him for being the first to tell her what he’d thought himself for weeks. “Of course I already know who you. I mean, since I’ve seen you and Carrie in a billion shows and I think you’re both fantastic. Sorry, is that weird? That’s probably weird.”

 “Of course not, because you’re a sweetheart,” Carrie interjected. “She’s a sweetheart,” Carrie repeated to the pair of them, as if daring somebody to challenge her.

 “Well, me and little miss sunshine over here are on our way out, and we need some fresh blood to keep this club kicking.” Carrie wrinkled her nose while Chris casually dragged Dan a step or two forward. “So, Analise, I hear you and Dan already know each other?”

 Analise’s sharp brown-green eyes caught on him. “Yeah, me and Dan take English together.”

 “We go way back,” said Dan, knowing full well there were a million actually witty things to say and not one had come to mind. Miraculously, she smiled.

 “Maybe back to the bottom of the class, if Turner’s last paper was any clue.”

 Dan may have laughed a little too loudly, judging by the silence that followed.

 “Sorry guys, don’t mean to break up the party, but uh –”

 Phil was stood at the edge of their little group, space-patterned jacket half zipped up and backpack over one shoulder. He looked a little sheepish, and it took Dan a moment to notice they had thoroughly blocked the exit.

 “Oh – I’m so sorry, sweetie,” Carrie spoke up, instantly moving aside. 

 “Our bad, mate,” added Chris.

 “’S no problem.” Phil shoved at the door heavy door with his shoulder. “Great practice you guys!”

 “Aw thanks, love, same to you.” Dan was impressed at Carrie’s ability to sound so genuine and detached at once.

 “Well…cheers, anyway!” Phil’s bright blue eyes somehow found Dan’s. His tongue peeked out of the corner of his mouth, and he seemed to hesitate. “Have a nice weekend,” he finished brightly, letting the door click shut behind him.

 “He seems lovely,” said Carrie, vaguely smoothing over the elephant in the room.

 “Well, sure,” Analise agreed, “But he can’t exactly…”

 “Act his way out of a paper bag – hey! Ow…”

 “Don’t be rude,” Carrie scolded, having just socked Chris none-too-lightly on the upper arm. “It’s not our place to judge. I think we should trust our director, don’t you, Dan?”

 “Hmm?” Dan sniffed, having been caught in a second of lost thought.

 “Everyone makes mistakes, though.”

 “As the wise Hannah Montana once said…” said Dan, and Analise giggled.

 “Well, I for one am starving,” said Carrie, quite deliberately changing the subject. “I think I’ll be going for chips whether anyone joins me or not.”

 “Nope, I’m in,” said Chris, leaning on the handle of the door.

 “Analise – care to tag along?” asked Carrie. At Chris’s look, Dan shrugged helplessly. He’d been working himself up to it.

 “You should come,” Dan managed, after a second.

 “Okay, yeah. I’d love to!” Analise flashed a smile. “Actually, do you guys know this great pub on Jameson Street?”

 Jameson Street was not far from Dan’s house. “Wait, is that the one that does the bacon –”

 “With the cheese?” Analise exclaimed. “Yes! Oh god, it’s heavenly.”

 After they’d all asserted their agreement with varying degrees of enthusiasm, Carrie linked arms with Analise and the group of them strode out the school building. Every time he made Analise smile, Dan couldn’t help but feel he was finally doing something right. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work was originally published on my tumblr (under the same username).


	4. Mirror Mirror

The weekend was gone way too fast, as weekends tended to go, but Dan had one definite to look forward to. This week he strode into rehearsal with his shoulders rolled back and his mouth relaxed into an easy smile. There were a few people milling about the auditorium, putting down their bags, chatting, flipping through scripts. Though Dan was tardy to nearly everything else, he got no small sense of satisfaction in seeing that even Ms. Alexis hadn’t arrived yet.

Another quick scan of the room found Carrie sitting cross-legged on the stage. Catching Dan’s eye, she waved him over.

Dan opted to ignore the steps on either end of the stage, but quickly regretted that decision once he tried to vault over the three meters of wooden platform and was left awkwardly straddling its side. There was something to be said for getting to know his performance space, but this was excessive. He swung his leg over and half-crawled the few feet to Carrie’s side.

“Happy Monday!” she chirped, giggling at him a bit. “Have a nice weekend?”

“What could possibly be happy about Mondays?” Dan was a little bit winded to be honest, and grateful that she wasn’t commenting. “But yeah, mostly uneventful, you?”

His weekend had been spent drowning in Mario Kart, coming up for air every so often to stuff his face with candy and crisps until the typical Sunday night homework frenzy. Friday had been more eventful by far. Arguing with Carrie that Macbeth was absolutely crazier than Hamlet. Analise suggesting Lear as a solid third contender. Chris adding that “Goneril” was ripe for a baby names comeback. Letting Analise steal his chips.

“Same – oh! I’ve added to my collection of mugs. It’s an awful addiction, I swear, but this one says ‘ _though she be but little, she is fierce_.’ I really couldn’t resist,” she said, smiling. “I suppose I’ve got into the spirit proper now.” 

Dan laughed, and followed up with, “Have you got off-book, then?” He felt immediately very stupid for asking. Thankfully, she only gave a simple hum in response. He added, “I, uh, tend to get a bit ahead of myself with the memorization.”

“That’s brilliant, though. Maybe you can give Chris some pointers.” She raised her eyebrows in the direction of the wings, where Dan hadn’t noticed his friend pacing, clutching script in both hands, and muttering under his breath. “He always pulls it together in the end, of course, but I wish he wouldn’t drive himself mad every moment leading up to that.”

“Hi, Carrie! Dan…”

“Analise – nice to see you looking bright and chipper,” Carrie patted the empty space between herself and Dan. “Pop yourself down, then.”

Before Dan could do more than offer Analise a smile, Ms. Alexis was calling the cast to circle up on the stage. Analise, having just sat down, ambled to her feet along with the rest. As the others stampeded into a circle, and Chris made the inevitable “amoeba” comment, Dan was briefly pressed shoulder to shoulder with her before Ms. Alexis made everyone take two big steps backs.

“Sorry, sorry.” A gasping kid nudged a breach beside Dan’s point in the enclosed circle. A glance told him it was Phil, dark fringe falling into his eyes and cheeks flushed – from embarrassment or exertion, Dan couldn’t tell.

“Right in the nick of time,” he murmured, taking a quarter step closer to Analise.

“I ran faster than the gingerbread man.“ 

Dan snorted, unable to stop himself, and shot the solemn-faced Phil a glance.

“Actors,” Ms. Alexis announced, from the center of their circle. She spoke like she was actively trying to make her voice echo. Narrowing her eyes, she peered around at them in turn. “I trust that you all had a restful –  _and productive_  – weekend. Now, I know that you know you’re supposed to be off book.” Dan smoothly met her gaze, but others had become noticeably shifty. “You haven’t broken my faith yet, but, hey, we’ve still got plenty of time together.” Phil’s eyes were planted firmly on the ground. She smiled. “Take a deep breath, actors, because you’re off the hook.”

From beside him, Phil did just that.

“Just for today, of course. Today, I thought we’d take the time to do some ensemble-building exercises,” said Ms. Alexis, with a flash of her pearly-toothed smile.

Dan’s nerves hummed a little louder, mostly excitement mingled with a bit of trepidation. Secretly, he kind of loved all the group bonding stuff theatre kids were made to do. It occasionally got awkward, sure, but the end result was this sort of delicious cast cohesion. While it wasn’t always the case that everybody got to be best mates, Dan loved the trust and solidarity heavy in the air by opening night. They would all breathe it in until they were high off the fumes and, just for a moment, in pursuit of that one perfect show, a cast would be more than family. The feeling rarely lasted long after the curtains closed. It was volatile, evanescent; it tended to drift away. That didn’t stop Dan from loving it, and craving it, which could probably be filed away as due cause for his theatre kick.

“Very well – kindly pair up with the actor next to you.”  

A side advantage to the bonding is that it sometimes gave Dan the opportunity to get closer to certain others, physically or otherwise. He turned instantly to Analise, “how about that” grin on his face, but he caught sight only of her long auburn braid. Her face was directed to Carrie, who gave him a sympathetic shrug over Analise’s shoulder. Dan felt a tap on his own shoulder, and he closed his eyes briefly in a grimace before pivoting around.

“Looks like that’s us, then,” said Phil, flipping his long fringe like a reflex twitch.

“Looks like.” Everyone else had paired off, and Dan gulped down his disappointment. He awaited instructions, fearing only the worst. 

“That’s grand, just grand,” Ms. Alexis nodded, her dangling earrings catching the light. “Let’s start with something simple, shall we?  _Man in the Mirror_ , we’ll call it. Carrie, you’re familiar with this exercise – why don’t you and your partner demonstrate?”

In Dan’s periphery, Analise stiffened. Carrie had strung her arm through the girl’s elbow.

“Be happy to!” Carrie exclaimed, and when Ms. Alexis directed them to step toward the center, Dan could just barely hear her whisper to Analise, “Don’t worry. It’s the simplest thing in the world, promise.”

“The name of the exercise is self-explanatory,” said Ms. Alexis, when the pair was in the middle, facing each other half a meter apart. “Carrie, you’ll lead. Analise can be follower for now. The follower mimics the leader’s actions. Easy enough, I know. Begin whenever you’re ready.”

Slowly, Carrie lifted her arm. Analise caught on and followed a half second after her, until their arms were outstretched ninety degrees. A few bare centimeters floated between their open palms, like the gap separating each from her reflection. 

“You must keep a few things in mind when mirroring,” Ms. Alexis continued, as the girls brought up another hand to parallel the first. “The first is to keep perfect eye contact. The eyes are the window to the soul, yes, but they are also your best clue as to what your partner will do next.” Carrie pressed her palms gently together as if in prayer, and Analise copied, eyes fixed firmly on the other’s face. “The second is to stay silent. You are relying entirely on concentration and trust.”

The pair was nearly in sync now, hugging arms around themselves and rocking their torsos back and forth. “This exercise is less about playing copycat and much more about finding trust in your partner. You have to trust, as silly as it all might get, that your partner will not lead you astray.” Carrie had her arms out and one leg lifted in what looked to Dan like a yoga pose, but Analise’s grounded leg was trembling. Her brow was taut with concentration. With an amused little chuckle, Ms. Alexis said, “Okay, girls, I’ve think we’ve demonstrated enough.” Upon hearing that, Analise nearly fell over. Carrie caught her arm just in time, and Analise smiled pink-faced up at her.

 “Right then, I’ll let you decide among yourselves leader and follower. Three minutes, by my timer, and we’ll swap.” Ms. Alexis clapped her hands twice. “Go!”

Dan sighed, moving to face Phil. “Got any preference?”

“Either’s good by me,” said Phil, frustratingly amiable.

 “Um, well, I’ve played the game before. So I can lead first, if you don’t care.” 

“Lead away!”

Dan was pretty darn acquainted with it, truthfully. He could’ve guessed it was in the top ten of every wannabe drama teacher’s copy of  _Fun Theatre Games_ , or some such other insipid guidebook. In Dan’s experience, this one tended to dissolve into animal impressions, ugly face-offs, and inappropriate self-touching. He was almost disappointed Ms. Alexis thought to include it in her repertoire. 

“Actors!” Ms. Alexis called. “I expect to hear nothing but crickets from here on out. And remember to use your eye contact!”

Phil mimed zipping up his lips, drawing a smirk from Dan. He raised his eyebrows as if to say _your call_. They locked eyes. 

Dan started off simple, raising one arm straight out to the side as Phil carefully followed. He lifted the other arm to meet it and then brought them both above his head. Drawing his elbows in front of his chest, he pressed his palms to his cheeks. Phil widened his blue eyes in comic surprise, to match the gesture, and Dan cracked a smile. Usually the mirroring exercise didn’t involve facial expressions, so when Phil smiled back, Dan couldn’t be sure whether he was copying. Slowly, he lifted his shoulders up to meet his ears. He dropped them back down again, Phil almost seamlessly in tune.

Dan decided to step it up a notch. Watching Phil’s eyes, he slowly lifted a foot and took a wide step to the right, doubling his stance. Fortunately, his uniform trousers were more forgiving than his skinny jeans. He crouched down slightly, releasing his hands from his face. Phil followed him, just slightly behind, though perhaps with a bit of new wariness. When he reached his arms out at an angle in front of him, Phil burst into giggles. Dan arched an eyebrow.

“You look like you’re giving birth,” whispered Phil. It might have sounded like an apology if not for the giggling.

“I do  _not_  look like I’m –”

“Switch!” Ms. Alexis’s command made Dan close his mouth, but he still felt all the blood in his face trying to rise beneath the layer of tan.

Phil’s first move as leader was to curl his fingers into claws and take a swipe at Dan in mid-air. To complete the pose, he bared his teeth and wrinkled his nose in a grimace. Dan was amused, despite doubting he could pull off the expression with quite as much gusto. Phil followed that up with a clumsy, slow-mo version of the robot.

His eyes were really very blue, Dan was noticing, now that he was required to stare into them. They were the kind of blue that people made a point of, usually in those crappy novels adorned with buxom women and shirtless men. One of those paperbacks would probably say you could swim in his azure pools, or sapphire orbs, or something equally ridiculous. They’d be hardly right because there was some green mixed in too, a dash of yellow that caught the light. If you could see galaxies in the midday sky, maybe that’s what Phil’s eyes would look like.

“Dan…earth to Dan.”

Dan blinked, possibly for the first time in a minute or two. It was strange to hear Phil say his name. It shouldn’t have been, considering he’d had a week to learn it, but it sent an odd jolt down Dan’s spine all the same.

“Did I go too far with the Godzilla thing? I was trying to mime, um, stomping on all the little townspeople.”

“No, uh,” said Dan, neglecting to whisper, “Forgot to look at your feet, sorry.”

“Thought I’d lost you on Jupiter, follower.”

Nearby, Analise and Carrie were blowing kisses to the ceiling. Across the room, face rapt with concentration, Chris directed his partner to rub his own chest in a way that could only be described as sensual. Before Dan could come to his bearings and respond, Ms. Alexis directed a shushing their way.

“One minute left, actors! Don’t break your concentration now!”

Phil met Dan’s eye again, sheepishly mouthing the word  _sorry_. They ended the mirroring the same as it had begun, with palms outstretched before one another, just barely not touching. Dan couldn’t tell if he was imagining the heat radiating off Phil’s skin. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work was originally posted on my Tumblr (under the same username).


	5. Train Wreck

“Take three guesses who I ran into today,” said Louise, seated comfortably on Dan’s bed while pretending to do work. Her pastel-pink skirt ballooned around her like a second duvet, concealing crisscrossed legs. In an attempt to avoid her distracting influence, Dan had planted himself on the floor. He was leaned up against the bed-frame, so Louise could only see the top-back region of his head.

Dan’s lips stopped moving from where they had been mouthing lines from the third act. Without looking up, he said, “First guess – George Clooney.”

“Damn, I wish. What I wouldn’t lick off that man.”

Dan barked out a laugh. “Okay, first of all – ew.” He used his finger, the most classic of bookmarks, to hold his place. “And might I remind you, for the umpteenth time – long-term, committed,  _monogamous_  relationship.”

“Don’t be a spoilsport, Daniel,” Louise turned a page of the notebook she wasn’t studying. “The List is sacred.”

“Does Clooney seriously make the bang freebie ten? Honestly, Louise, you could do with a little originality. And you could do better,” said Dan. He granted Louise a moment for some affronted scoffing. “My second guess is your mum.” 

“Do you feel the glaring beam of loathing directed at the back of your head? I hope it burns you up good and crispy.”

Dan smirked, squirming as her pointer finger poked at him. “Thoughtful of you, Louise. Figured the tan could use some touching up.”

 Louise rolled her glittery-lidded eyes. “If you must know,” she raised an eyebrow, voice infused with a little pompousness, “I’ve had a chat with faerie boy.”

“You never gave me a third guess.”   

“He was quite lovely,” Louise went on, ignoring him. “Funny as well, you hardly mentioned that. And those eyes…” She gave a wistful sigh. “I get it, Dan, I really do.”

Dan opened his book again, bringing it up closer to his face than was likely necessary. He grumbled, “Get what? There’s nothing to get.”

“’Course, sweetie, of course. I caught him just as he was headed to rehearsal, told him I knew you—”

All pretenses lost, Dan let the play drop to the carpet.

“Why is that relevant?” He spun around to face her. “It’s not like I’m best mates with him.”

 “Breathe, Dan,” Louise chuckled. “I didn’t go spilling all your secrets. I only mentioned a friend of mine was in the cast, and then of course he asked who, and then—”

“Wait – are you why he was late?” He braced his forearms on the duvet, just out of the skirt’s range, and leaned forward. It made sense, and Louise’s shifty crack of a smile was confirmation.

“So he was late then?” she said, with a bit of regret. “He was worried about that.” She rapidly switched gears. “Oh, did you have any idea he’s a total smartiepants? You know, he’s already got an offer from York for next fall.“ 

“Really? Shit that’s–” Dan dropped his chin into crossed arms, feeling his mental processes spasm and reroute. “Not the point. His accomplishments, while impressive, are not the point.” He carefully met her gaze. “You swear you didn’t say anything about me, right?”

“I didn’t. Pinky promise,” she said, and Dan let out a breath, “Though I am wondering what’s got you all in a tizzy. Did anything happen? Has there been any more contact?”

Dan hesitated. After a sigh, he said, “We were paired up for some dumb bonding exercise.” Excitement instantly flashed over Louise’s face, and Dan blanched. “No, seriously, it was really dumb. We spent five minutes in silence making faces at each other.”

In a cheerful sing-song, Louise asked, “And how was that?”

“Fine?” said Dan, helplessly, examining the knuckles of his dominant hand. He never should have brought it up. “I mean…I don’t not like him, I guess?”

Louise scooted close enough to place a would-be comforting hand over his fist. Her lip-gloss glinted at him as she smirked. “You’ve always had a way with words, sweetie.”

Dan used those words to tell her to kindly fuck off. “Actually I’m pretty sure the faces were the best acting I’ve seen out of him,” he scoffed, “I would’ve rather been partners with Analise. It was such a close fucking call, too.”

Louise frowned. “Who?” 

“Analise,” he repeated, “The girl from my English class who’s playing Hermia.” He gave it a few seconds, only to be met again with that blank stare. “The girl I’ve fancied since the start of term – oh  _come on_  Louise for fuck’s sake.”

She tapped a pink pen several times on her covered knee. “Oh!” she said, after a few seconds and a little too loudly. “ _Right_ …Analise, right.”

Dan was squinting at her suspiciously when his mother’s voice heralded from downstairs. “Dan! Is Louise staying for dinner?”

Dan raised his eyebrows in her direction, and she shrugged.

“So long as it’s not meatloaf.”

* * *

As promised, next rehearsal granted Dan ample opportunity to prove his talented memory. Ms. Alexis had them run through the first act, for the first time on their feet and without the aid of their scripts.

Dan’s first scene, with Analise and Chris, ran smoothly. His body was positively whirring with energy – with chemistry, he liked to think – as he pledged Lysander’s love to Hermia, promising it to the wispy-bearded year eleven playing her father. Chris had gotten his lines mostly memorized from yesterday, encouragingly. But there was a frantic quality about his performance. Dan was hardly one to question any actor’s method, but the subtle wildness was notable enough for Dan to raise his eyebrows over at Analise. She returned his glance with a curious little shrug and moved on to her next line. 

For her part, Analise was hesitant at first, crunching up her face each time she had to break character and call out to the audience for a line. But by Carrie’s entrance, before which the two of them were alone onstage, they had fallen into a rhythm and Analise was dropping lines only rarely. Dan was tempted to bring a hand up to her cheek, flushed pink by easing nerves and developing emotional foundations behind the recited words. The action felt like the appropriate accompaniment to “ _the course of true love never did run smooth_.” Then again, they weren’t blocking anything yet and he didn’t want to overstep his bounds.   

Carrie, of course, was on the ball. Her verbal sparring with Hermia already had the edges of sharpness, a potential that Dan was excited to see forged and welded in the blacksmith fires of rehearsal. In the act’s final monologue, Helena professed her want for the love of Demetrius, demanding the audience’s sympathies.

“ _Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind_ ,” Carrie delivered the lines out toward the auditorium’s exit sign, making Helena’s anguish palatable. “ _And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind_.” 

Dan had never been in love. He looked over at Analise sitting cross-legged in the opposite wing, lips quirking up as she watched Carrie’s performance. Still, he thought, there was nothing of blindness in the way his stomach flopped over at the sight of her pretty smile.

After Carrie’s exit, the following scene featured only the players, who served as additional comic relief within the comedy. Several of them, including Bottom, the to-be donkey, Dan recognized from his year. When they finished off the act, there was a smattering of applause from the gathered cast.

Ms. Alexis clapped her hands three times. “Right then,” she said, “That was hardly a first run to be ashamed of. Some of you are better versed on your lines than others.” Though Dan caught Analise biting down on her lower lip, he guessed the words were directed to the five foot four guy playing the Duke, who’d floundered at every block of lines over a couplet.

“And allow me to remind you that memorization is the earliest and the easiest step in this process,” Ms. Alexis continued. “Knowing the words takes us only so much closer to understanding the words, which in turn takes us closer to believing the words, which is of course necessary if you wish an audience to believe them.” She smiled, took a cursory glance down at her spindly wristwatch, and said, “Come to think, we’ve had a speedier run of things than I planned for. No matter – adaptability is the lifeblood of theatre.”

Ms. Alexis looked around at her suddenly weary underlings. “Those of you who’ve worked so hard today on the first act, please run your scenes again amongst yourselves. You can sit yourselves at the back of the theatre in a moment. Those who haven’t yet made their entrances – I believe it’s time to start tackling Act Two.”  

Dan, still seated near the wings, was at the perfect vantage point to spot Phil, who’d spent the rehearsal in concentrated quiet. At that announcement, Phil’s blue eyes bulged.

“Don’t worry, faeries,” said Ms. Alexis, “I don’t expect you to have your lines perfectly. Though, you might have had the foresight to begin the process of committing them to memory. Especially as you got off so easily today.” She poked her pointer finger to the tip of her nose. All of a sudden, Phil had his nose buried in his copy of the play, eyes scanning. With another clap of the hands, Ms. Alexis said, “Up on stage now, actors! Titania, Oberon! Chop chop! Puck!”

Phil hopped to his feet as if stung. His face had grown even paler, if that was possible.

Dan felt a tap on the shoulder. “Ready to make another run of it?”

He blinked up at Chris. “Right, sure.” Analise and Carrie, happily chatting, had already begun to make their way to back of the auditorium. Dan chanced one look back at the stage, where the faeries had gathered, before following after them.

Dan went through their run distracted, in a word. They were gathered just far enough from the stage to still hear the beginning of the second act, and Dan’s attention kept being drawn to what was essentially a train-wreck.

Phil was really trying to know his lines. That much was evident. He would cough out a sentence or two, script held stubbornly at his side, before breaking down into stammered guessing. More than once, Ms. Alexis called for him to stop. With that cryptic look on her face, she kept reminding him that Shakespeare wasn’t meant for paraphrasing, and that there was no harm in reading off the page for now. Phil was bright red after her second rebuke, kindly stated though it was. For the rest of his scene, he glued his eyes to the page. Lines meant to be funny were recited straight-faced and empty of tone. He neither met the other actors’ eye contact nor took a step from his awkwardly stiff position on stage. He did not look up even to heed his exit cue.

“Dan,” said Analise, for the third or fourth time, “It’s your line.”

He looked back at her, stumbled over a smile. “Shit – sorry. Keep thinking about Turner’s paper tomorrow.”

Analise nodded sympathetically, but Chris cocked a skeptical eyebrow.

“I’ve known you long enough to see through your lies, mate,” said Chris. Dan’s pulse jumped, and he opened his mouth to say god knows what. Chris interrupted his rather pathetic attempts to speak with an exaggerated grimace at the stage. “I know what you’re actually on about,” he said, “And I’ll say it again – Alexis was fucking mad to cast him.”

Carrie sighed, tossing back her mane of yellow curls. But Chris jabbed a finger in her direction before she could get a word out. 

“Don’t even start with the goodwill-toward-man bullshit,” he said, “You know it’s true. Poor little Danny over here’s afraid his first show’ll be ruined.”

 “I’m over six foot, you arse,” said Dan, unsure which point in that statement to retaliate against first.

“Now you’re just being overdramatic,” Carrie interjected over him. Her hair seemed to have puffed up like a peacock’s tail. “No individual actor is going to  _ruin_  any show – I don’t care how good or bad they are.”

“So you admit he’s bad!” Chris cried out triumphantly.

“I did no such –”

“Guys!” Analise exclaimed. Once all eyes were on her, she turned to staring at her lap. “Can we just, you know, focus on our parts and leave the rest be?”

“Now there’s an idea I can get behind,” said Dan. Chris shot him a practiced look of betrayal.

“Agreed,” said Carrie, smugly jutting out her chin. “Thank you, Analise.”

“Can we finish the fucking scene at least?” said the short kid playing the Duke, rolling his eyes at them all. “I know this is your home-away-from-home or some shit, but some of us actually have a life.”

* * *

After they’d finished their read, and as everyone was preparing to head home, Ms. Alexis called Dan over. He met eyes with Chris, who shrugged at him.

“Text you in a bit,” said Dan quickly. “Try to chase down Louise before she gets out of fashion club.”

“Sure you’d wouldn’t rather have me capture Analise? Hold her for ransom?” 

“Sod off.” 

Bag slung over one shoulder, Dan speed-walked over to Ms. Alexis. He was a little intimidated despite himself.

“Mr. Howell,” she said, with a tight little smile, “Dan – I’m afraid I have a small request to make of you.”

“Yeah, sure. I mean – what is it?” He wasn’t a suck-up, but there was a certain length he would travel in order to stay in the drama teacher’s good books.

“You might have noticed that our Puck is struggling just a tad with lines.” Dan didn’t know whether or not he should nod in agreement. He opted for a noncommittal shrug. “Seeing as you already have a better grasp on the script than most of your cast-mates,” Ms. Alexis continued, and Dan flushed with the undercurrents of pride, “and seeing as you and he are two of our newest initiates, I predicted you would be a good match.”

Dan was not understanding.

“Phil’s open to the idea of a little extra help. He was reluctant to ask for it, but when I suggested your name he became more agreeable. He even suggested you meet during lunch. You share a lunch period, is that right?”

“I – what’s his lunch period?”

Ms. Alexis told him.

“Yeah, that’s right,” Dan muttered. “So…did you want me to read lines with him?”  

“Help him until he finds the words,” she said, twirling her long necklace around her fingers. Whatever that meant, thought Dan. “And only if you’re not opposed, of course.”

Dan was opposed; he was very opposed. But he had no good reason to be. Maybe he’d even be able to salvage their play from certain disaster.

“I’ll meet with him tomorrow at lunch.”

“That’s wonderful,” said Ms. Alexis, “Thank you, darling.” With a swish of her long skirt, she turned to walk away, but Dan called a final thought out after her.

“Wait! Sorry.” He already regretted opening his mouth, but there was nowhere to go but forward. “He – Phil, um…he wanted me to help him?”

Ms. Alexis almost but not quite smiled, a suspicious twinkle to her stormy eyes.

“You’re a very talented actor, Mr. Howell.”  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work was originally posted on my Tumblr (under the same username).


	6. Sing a Little Dream

Dan was leaning up against the auditorium door, arms crossed and tapping the left sole of his converse against the linoleum. A low laugh made him look up.

“I – um…you showed.” Phil had his script clutched in one hand. He took a step closer, ruffling his dark hair with the other. 

At lunch, Dan had ignored Chris’s texts and dodged Louise’s inquisitive prodding. He hadn’t wanted to tell anybody about his meeting with Phil, not yet anyway. Though he usually had a healthy disdain for superstition, he was afraid to jinx it. He’d realized halfway through his last class period that Ms. Alexis had failed to mention a meeting place, and that he had zero way of contacting Phil. He’d shown up at the auditorium as a best guess.

Dan stood up straight, or as straight as was natural for him. “Is that so shocking?”

“I guess not,” said Phil, budging his backpack strap further up his shoulder. He was close enough now to peer through the door window. “I don’t think anyone’s in there, if you wanna –“

“Right, sure.”

They spared each other a glance before Phil pushed his way into the auditorium, Dan following closely behind. Amidst velvet fold-up chairs and under burnt-out stage lights, they were strikingly alone.

“So, uh,” Dan said, voice echoing in the emptiness. Arbitrarily, he plopped down his bag on a chair in the second row. “I figured we could go through Puck’s first couple of monologues in the second act – since that’s what you’ll have to have down pretty soon.”

Phil had already planted himself in the adjacent chair, leaning against his galaxy-patterned backpack and flipping pages. “‘The king doth keep his revels here tonight’, right?” Phil read from the script in that odd, exaggerated tone. “’Doth,” he repeated, with a giggle. “I think we should bring that back.”

“Right. I’ll, uh, leave that particular mission to you.” Dan gingerly sat down beside him. “So – how bout you just try to run it from memory to start. I can stay on book and let you know where you mess up.”

It was clear Phil had put in a little brainwork in the past twenty-four hours. The paraphrasing had decreased in quantity, and, dare Dan think it, increased in quality.  _Crowns him with flowers_  turned into “gives him the most hipster of flower crowns,” and Dan let out a snort. _Makes him all her joy_  was transformed into “thinks he’s all her sunshine-y happiness,” which Dan couldn’t help but smile at. Phil dropped only a couple of lines, each time wincing and glancing toward Dan with scrunched-up eyes.

“Definitely an improvement,” said Dan, trying to be consoling and doubting his success. 

“It’s easier when there aren’t so many people.”

Dan had him recite it again.

This time, rather than concentrating on Phil’s level of rote memorization, Dan dove into a deeper analysis. He could normally pinpoint an actor’s weaknesses with almost surgical precision. Though he kept his opinions pretty close at hand, Dan liked to think he was a good critic. Maybe X had a habit of over-enunciating everything, or Y defaulted to a very unfunny voice when attempting comedy, or fucking Z never played through a scene without demonstrating her ability to cry on command. Noticing someone’s problems were the first step to fixing them, but Phil’s problems were nowhere near obvious. His acting was a rubix cube of dullness and exaggeration and a host of other idiosyncrasies. Sometimes Dan was sure Phil knew exactly what he was saying, playing up the humor so that Dan was half-smiling, half-cringing. A line later Phil would get all dead behind the eyes; for all the non-English speaking listener knew, he could’ve been reading from the telephone book.

“Okay - please don’t take this the wrong way, but,” Dan said, after several minutes of being the helpless listener, “What did you read, exactly, for your audition? Did Ms. Alexis give you any notes or…?”

Phil ducked his head down, etching shadows under his eyes. “That bad, huh?”

“No!” said Dan, too quickly. “I mean, I’m just gathering information… how best to help you out and all that. That’s the goal, right?” If he could only determine what Ms. Alexis has seen in Phil, maybe he could make it happen again.

Phil sighed. “That’s the idea. Well, she had me do this passage near the end. A really poetic one, but I liked it. Thought it was pretty." 

"Do you remember any of it? Could you recite it?”

The little smile that had broken out at Phil’s mention of the passage faltered as a blush tinted his cheeks. “Um…she didn’t exactly have me read it. I more…sang it?”

“Sang?” Dan repeated. “You sing?”

“No – god, no I really don’t. But that’s what she asked so…” Phil trailed off with a weak shrug.

“God, believe me, I can’t sing for shit. Gave up on musicals before I even started going out for plays. Much as I’d love to be the Troy Bolton to some unlucky lady’s Gabriella." 

Laughing, Phil said, "There’s still time to get your head in the game.”

“Would it be too much to say I’ve already dropped the ball?”

“That’s the worst ever,” Phil groaned, but his embarrassment had softened into something like determination. “Okay – I’ll do it.” He turned again toward his script, flipping the pages in chunks all the way toward the back cover. “If you laugh, I’m quitting the play and teleporting to Iceland.”

“I won’t laugh. Promise.” Singing wasn’t the weirdest thing Dan had ever been forced to do in an audition. This could be weirder.

Having settled on a passage of text, Phil took a deep breath and angled his torso straight ahead, away from Dan. In a low voice, neither skilled nor particularly unpleasant, he began to sing.

_“Now the hungry lion roars, and the wolf behowls the moon.”_

Dan recognized the monologue, right near the end of the play. It was set to an intimately familiar melody Dan had never heard before – a simple, slow, lilting thing. 

_“Whilst the heavy ploughman snores, all with weary task fordone."_

Now was the part of the play when everybody’s happy ending had been had. Freed from mundane human love affairs, the faeries returned to their immortal lives of indifferent pleasure.

_"We faeries that do run, from the presence of the sun.”_

Even the most hopeless singer could pick up this tune. But Dan suspected Ms. Alexis wasn’t really out for Grammy-worthy vocals. He was getting an inkling of what her purpose in this was, however. Singing these lines meant breathing with the rhythm of them, letting each one float in the air for just enough of a moment to look at it.

_“_ _Following darkness like a dream_ _.”_

The song meant that Phil couldn’t rush or pile on too much emphasis anywhere. All he could do was relax into the words, a smile reshaping between each new movement of his lips, a hint of Puck’s impish delight dancing behind his eyes. Somehow, for the first time, Phil was bringing the words to life.

 _“Like a dream…”_  Phil cut himself off before the last note could fully sound, coughing lightly into his fist. “There was, um, a bit more. But it got kind of strange and techno-y so I thought I’d save your ears from more abuse.”

“That really wasn’t bad, Phil,” said Dan, “I get why Alexis cast you now.” He backtracked, gesturing searchingly with his left hand. “More, I mean – I get it more.”

“You don’t have to lie.” At Phil’s sad sort of smile, nothing like Puck anymore, Dan’s gut endured an odd jolt. “If you lie, I can’t get any better.”

“I’m not lying. And I know exactly what we have to do now.”

The song unlocked something in Phil. And since working all Puck’s monologues into serenades clearly wasn’t an option, the task left them to them now was to transpose the singing’s results on the speaking. Epiphany heaping enthusiasm onto his words, Dan explained all this to a wide-eyed Phil.

Phil was toying with the button of his shirt cuff, undoing it and redoing it again. In the silence, Dan’s eyes were drawn to the movement.

 “Wow, I – it sounds so simple when you put it like that.”

Despite the auditorium’s relative insulation, the suddenness of the bell made them both wince.

“I’ve got English,” said Dan, “But we can meet same time tomorrow, if you want.”

Phil was already stood up and gathering his things. He glanced back at Dan before saying, “You don’t have to. You’ve given me lots of brain food already so thanks for that.”

“I don’t mind,” Dan mumbled. He hadn’t budged a centimeter.

“It’s nice of you to offer.” Phil was clutching both straps of his galaxy backpack over his broad shoulders. He shifted in his dirt-stained trainers. “I just know you don’t like me very much.”

Dan froze. “I don’t… that’s not –”

“It’s fine. I’m not bothered or anything.” Phil shrugged, jostling his backpack. “But it wouldn’t feel right, making you give up your lunch for me.”

“Right, but…” Dan trailed off again, which Phil seemed to take for adequate response.

“See you at rehearsal, then!” Phil looked back as he neared the double doors. “Thanks again for the help!”

Dan had gotten so psyched about their breakthrough and now Phil was leaving and they’d never get a chance to follow through on it. Phil was leaving because Dan was an idiot whose head had blown up big enough to fuck up his judgment. Phil was leaving because apparently Dan wore his judgmental bullshit on his fucking sleeve.

“Fuck! Phil – wait.”

The exclamation did the trick.

“What? Did I drop my keys over there or something?” Phil frowned, removing his hand from the door to pat down his pockets.

“No – or not that I’m aware of…” Having scooped up his own bag, Dan took several large steps in Phil’s direction. “I just wanted to let you know that I do like you.” Dan felt his face heat up, especially as the distance between them was closing, and frantically added. “I mean – sorry if you got that impression, but, um, yeah, you’re pretty cool…dude.”

Now Phil was laughing at him. “’Dude’ is not a normal part of your vocabulary is it?”

“Only ironically,” Dan sighed. But he felt things were pretty well patched up when they took on the double doors together, Phil’s shoulder pressed up against his. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work was originally posted on my Tumblr (under the same username).


	7. Duck

Nothing had the ability to well and truly pop Dan’s good moods like gym class. This week it was pretty much the deluxe, blu-ray edition of hell.

It was the coldest day since about May. Rain was drizzling half-heartedly from the sky and mud squelched between pathetic patches of grass. Mr. Linden had declared it to be the perfect conditions for a bit of outdoor rugby, so here Dan was – damp and shivering in the gym clothes he should’ve remembered to forget.

His usual strategy in this class was to channel invisibility. If he wasn’t noticed by his peers picking teams, or by Mr. Linden, or by anybody with a projectile, Dan usually survived. He stuck close to walls, or, failing that, Chris. He sent out a weekly prayer to every deity that Chris was stuck here with him.

“How much more wind d’ya think it would take to get Linden’s toupee to fly off?” Chris said thoughtfully, eying the helmet-like protrusion that bounced on Mr. Linden’s head each time he blew his whistle. “If it did, maybe we could nab it. Get our hands on some crazy glue and we could attach it to the ball.”

The second Mr. Linden’s eyes caught upon them, they resumed their lazy jogging up the field after their teammates. A few seconds was all it took to make Dan’s breath grow labored. “It’d be an improvement – on both their looks,” he huffed. They came to a stop again toward the middle of the field. Mr. Linden had abandoned judging them to break up a scuffle between two particularly adrenaline-hyped skinheads.

“So – I’d love a second opinion,” said Chris, swiping a damp lock of hair back in line with the rest of his fringe. “Am I crazy, or is Lester actually not quite as shit?”

Dan ducked his chin to hide the grin that washed impulsively over his face. He had kept up practicing with Phil all through last week and half of the current one. After their initial breakthrough, Phil had been steadily applying the sensibilities of singing to Puck’s speeches. It worked out because Phil was a quick learner, naturally at ease with Dan’s trademark bluntness. Dan had stopped hesitating to let Phil know where and how he was messing up, since he knew that Phil wouldn’t see insults where help was meant. The play’s last few rehearsals had shown Phil in a new light. It was never quite as bright as during their time spent practicing alone; it was subtle. But Ms. Alexis had noticed straight away, directing a knowing smirk toward Dan in the middle of Puck’s first monologue. Maybe the cast was starting to catch on.

“He has, hasn’t he?” said Dan, trying to keep his tone casual. After the first instance of secret keeping, Dan had continued to not tell anybody about their meetings. His private explanation was that he wanted to let Phil keep credit for his own improvement.

Chris shrugged. “I’m not saying he’s brilliant, but, yeah, maybe there’s hope for the Titanic after all.”

“That’s high praise coming from you.” Dan was carefully digging the toe of his trainers into the mud. Considering these were the hideous ones he never wore outside gym, the squishing was actually a little satisfying.

“Says the twat who hasn’t said two non-scripted words to the guy all term,” said Chris, and Dan wanted to object to that, somehow, but his friend continued, “Hey, when’re you gonna muscle up the gonads to ask out Analise any –  _duck_!”

With a deafening whack, the rugby ball collided with the back of Dan’s skull.

“Fuck!” Dan was clutching at his mud-spattered and throbbing head. “Shit motherfucking son of a bitch!”

Chris winced. “Shit, mate. You alright? Got a concussion or anything?”

“How the fuck should I know?” Dan shouted. “Okay, which of these shitheads can’t fucking look where they’re throwing a bloody –”

“Next time,” a louder, deeper voice interjected. Dan spun around and came toe-to-toe with Mr. Linden, half a head shorter but nearly twice as wide. “How about you keep your eye on the ball, instead of playing paddy-cake with your pansy mates.” With a chorus of scattered snickering behind him, Mr. Linden puffed out his chest more. He narrowed his eyes and barked, “Got that, Howell?”

Dan wasn’t sure if it was the dull pain or searing anger that tightened his jaw, making it difficult to force out the obligatory “yes, sir.”

“That’s more like it, ‘yes, sir.’ Kendell – do a lap.”

“What?” Chris spluttered. “I wasn’t –”

“ _Now_ , Kendell.”

Before breaking out into a jog, Chris patted him briefly, what was meant to be reassuringly, on his shoulder blade. Dan instantly tensed up, hating the way Mr. Linden smirked. He braced himself for further impact.

“Howell – let’s see how you do front and center. Bout time you learned to appreciate a good hustle, boy.”

Since the rules of rugby were about as foreign to him as Swahili, and since the guy opposing him was at least twice his weight, Dan was tackled onto his stomach within three minutes.

“Get the  _fuck_  off me,” he practically snarled, struggling and tasting dirt.

The asshole only laughed, his warm, staccato breath slithering over Dan’s neck.

“Alright, boys, break it up!” Mr. Linden exclaimed. The asshole – Vincent, Dan suddenly recalled – removed his weight with effortless obedience.

“Sorry, sir!” Vincent said, jogging in a semi-circle around him as he struggled to his feet.  “Romeo wouldn’t let me up. Told him I had a girlfriend.”

Dan was going to punch him. He had never punched someone in his life, and he was about to sock Vincent in his motherfucking dick of a face. “You piece of –”

“Detention,” said Mr. Linden, blowing his whistle for good measure. “Two weeks – hear that, Howell? Lunch period. Starting tomorrow.” 

“Wait, you can’t –”

“Talk again and it’s three.” He glanced down at his watch, and Dan flinched when his whistle rang out again. “Lockers! Bring it in, boys! Hustle!”

* * *

Dan’s knees were rubbed red and scraping uncomfortably against the too-tight fabric of his jeans. After gym, he’d zealously scrubbed at the mud with industrial soap and paper towels, but even then he hadn’t been able to get it all off. More dirt was on his elbows. Plus, his hair was disheveled and curling beyond repair. He was entirely tempted to ditch Phil and bum around until rehearsal, but this was going to be their last practice for a while. So he stuck it out.

When Dan was about to turn the corner toward the auditorium, he heard three sounds in quick succession: rubber skidding, the thud of something heavy hitting the floor, a sudden shout.

“Shit – didn’t see you, mate,” said an unpleasantly familiar voice.

“Should’ve known from the faggy backpack, Vince.”

Dan froze, hidden behind the nearest wall but feeling their laughter. Wearily, he peered his head around to see Phil on his hands and knees, gathering up scattered books and papers as Vincent and his cronies looked on. Dan couldn’t see Phil’s face. He was powerfully lightheaded. He didn’t want this, any of this, and he couldn’t do a damn thing to help because it was all too familiar. Then Phil was ambling to his feet, not very graceful but with his chin jutted out. He towered over Vincent by a good half a head.

“S’ fine,” said Phil, slapping a smile tight across his face. “It must be really hard to suddenly lose control of your foot movements like that. I’m sure you’ll get a handle on it by graduation – if you graduate, of course.”

Vincent had gone a bit red-faced, his gang stirring behind him like a group of waterlogged housecats. “One more word, Lester, and I’ll lose control of my fist into your face.”

Phil was unfazed, or so it seemed. “I know for a fact that Mrs. Hasselman goes for a bathroom break right down the hall every half an hour. She’s due ‘round in…” Phil spared a quick glance at his phone. “Yeah, about five minutes. If you wanna risk it, go ahead.”

There was a moment of silence as one boy stared down the other. Vincent blinked first.

“Come on, then,” he grumbled, jerking his head at his friends. “The fag’s not worth our time.”

“Watch yourself, Lester,” said the one who’d spoken earlier. The pack moved on, thankfully in Dan’s opposite direction, leaving Phil alone in the hallway. The dark-haired boy closed his eyes and shook his head, as if to rid himself of the ordeal. It would’ve been a million times easier to speed walk out the building, but for whatever reason Dan took a step from behind the wall of lockers.

“Um, hi.”

Phil jumped. “Shit.” Apparently, he wasn’t quite off the defensive. “Did you hear all that?”

“Mostly, yeah. I would’ve butted in but…”

“No, I get it,” Phil shrugged. “No need to put yourself in the line of fire.”

“They’re fucking assholes.” A fire had flared up beneath Dan’s words, especially knowing that Phil didn’t fault him for being a miserable coward. Dan could be furious at himself in private. “You literally handed Vincent his own arse though. I’m impressed.”

“Lots of practice, I guess.” 

There was a question implicit in that kind of throwaway statement. Dan let it hover in the empty space between them. He sighed.

“Look, honestly I don’t think I can handle running lines right now. It’s been a beyond shit day. Another pleasant encounter with Vince, let’s just say. I’m fucking exhausted. Could we take a rain check, maybe?”

Smile and furrowed brow were competing for prominence on Phil’s face. “’Course. If that’s what you want, then it’s fine. You deserve a break. You’ve been helping me loads.” He hesitated, concern winning out. “Dan, did Vince –”

“I’m not hurt or anything,” he said quickly. “It was just… stupidity.”

Phil bit his lower lip. “Right.”

“I’ve got detention, by the way.” Dan let out a bitter laugh. “So I won’t be able to meet at lunch anymore, or at least until fucking Linden decides he’s through roughing me up.”

“Oh.”

“I’m a massive twat to bail on you now. Fuck.”

After a moment’s troubled thought, Phil took several strides toward Dan, reaching into his pocket as he did so.

“Give me your number.”

All of a sudden, the cool weight of Phil’s phone was in his hand. “What?”

“I mean, if that’s okay,” Phil amended, ducking his head bashfully. “This way we could maybe meet up after rehearsal. You could come over to mine or…?”

“Yeah. I think – that’d be good.” Carefully, Dan tapped his way into Phil’s contacts.  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work was originally posted on my Tumblr (under the same username).


	8. Enigma

All through rehearsal that afternoon, Dan could feel the phone in his pocket weighed down by Phil’s number. They were pretty solid on their feet for the first act. Dan was thrilled about the fact that Analise’s confidence had grown behind every line and Chris was finally relaxing, starting to have the sort of fun with dialogue that Dan knew to be his trademark. Chris certainly had fun prodding Dan with a prop sword when he dropped a line for the third time that run. He’d been too busy calculating the required length-of-time-elapsed before it stopped being creepy to text someone.

“Shit, mate,” said Chris, after Dan, with an underestimated smack, sent the spray-painted length of wood clattering across the floor. “I can appreciate a fair lady of the court as much as the next bloke, but I’m afraid there’s such a thing as too in-character.”

Dan blinked, realized he had been zoning out directly in Analise’s direction, and was met with the sudden, intense desire to reclaim the sword and bludgeon a bitch.

“Dan just went away for a minute, I’m sure,” Analise said. She peered down at her script as she unfolded it, smoothed the crease down the middle, and folded it again. There was a redness in her cheeks that Dan related to but wasn’t sure his tanned skin could match.

“Yeah, sorry – wasn’t staring, promise.” He laughed uneasily, hoping he hadn’t inadvertently implied she wasn’t worth staring at. Dan was about to backtrack, but the conversation moved on without him.

“Silly Daniel,” Carrie perked up from where she was studying her script nearby. “Fairyland isn’t ‘til next scene.”

Dan’s phone buzzed. He didn’t look at it for the rest of the run, but he squeezed it in his pocket as if he could pop off its screen and read the insides in Braille.

_From: Phil  
A little birdie tells me alexis’s cancelling practice tmrw. c u after school? XD_

_From: Phil  
The little birdie may have been ms. alexis_

_From: Phil  
ok ms. alexis told me 0_0_

* * *

“Sorry – I would’ve suggested mine but my room’s a disaster zone and I wouldn’t want to subject you to my mum,” said Dan, as he and Phil walked down the pavement. It was unusually sunny for mid-October, which only served to shine light on the awkwardness of their situation. Dan spoke mainly to fill the silence. They’d quickly filed through such easy topics as the sunniness and that day’s classes and how strange it already was not to have rehearsal, though Ms. Alexis was awesome to reward the cast with a break. Now, they were in acquaintance conversation desert.

Wondering whether this was a good idea, Dan continued. “My mum’s neurotic about strangers seeing the house in its unpolished state. Not that you’re all that much of a stranger, anyway…”

Phil nodded. He looked so entirely unperturbed that Dan considered the possibility that the awkward was exclusive to his own head. Maybe that was more of a probability.

“I know all about mums,” Phil smiled brightly. Abruptly, he stopped walking, Dan taking several more steps before he noticed. “Well, looks like my place is closer anyways. Unless you live across from school, or under the rugby bleachers.”

Dan’s confusion cleared as he looked up at the two-story, pale blue house shaded by a tall oak tree. Multi-colored leaves crunched beneath his feet as they trod the pebbled path to Phil’s front door. “Actually I live in the janitor’s cupboard. Rent’s cheaper.”   

Phil presented him with a sensible nod, though a smile cracked through the façade. He turned the doorknob with practiced ease and strode into his home. Dan trailed tentatively behind, and was instantly whacked in the nostrils.

“Mum!” Phil shouted his way through the silence. “Dan’s here! Did you make cookies?”

Dan took Phil’s lead in unzipping his jacket and kicking off his shoes. A heavily Northern voice echoed back from somewhere within the house.

“ _Dan who!_ ”

“Dan Howell! From the play! We’re practicing – okay, hold on.” Phil chose to forgo the shouting in favor of striding sock footed toward the voice. With Dan following after him, glancing around sporadically at the assorted furnishings and picture frames, Phil entered a brightly lit kitchen. A silver-haired woman in red oven mitts was placing a tray atop the boilers.

Phil swooped in, snatched a cookie up from the tray, and hot-potatoed it back and forth between his hands a few rounds before shoving most of it into his mouth.

“Good afternoon to you too, dear.”

“’S too hot…” Phil winced, stinking out his tongue to avoid the remaining bits of searing chocolate.

“You’ve barely given them a minute to cool,” clucked Mrs. Lester, as she removed her mitts, “In seventeen years, it’s a wonder you haven’t burned off your tongue altogether.”

Spectator turned specimen, Dan felt Phil’s mum shift her appraising gaze to him. He forced a smile.

“Mum… Dan.” Phil spoke through and gestured with the cookie. “Dan – Mum.”

Dan lifted a hand in a small wave, not sure whether to offer it for a shake. “It’s nice to meet you. The cookies smell great.”

Mrs. Lester’s smile didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Please dear, feel free to try one – before my silly son makes them all disappear.”

Phil looked up guiltily from where he was piling cookies onto a paper napkin. Carefully balancing his stash, he made his way to the kitchen door,.

“Well, me and Dan better get to practicing,” said Phil, shooting him a meaningful glance. “Talk to you later, mum.” 

“That’s fine, that’s fine. Thought I might work on your wings, anyhow. They’re coming along nicely, but the beading’s been giving me difficulty.”

“Mum’s helping me with my costume,” Phil explained.  

Mrs. Lester turned on the sink with a hiss. With a mixing bowl in one hand and a sizable scrub-brush in the other, she raised her voice over the rush of the water. “The way I see it, if my son’s a faerie – fine. At the very least he’ll be a well-dressed one.” She laughed then, a little too loudly and with a bit more enthusiasm than the comment seemed to warrant.

Neither Phil nor Dan joined in. They left the kitchen shortly thereafter, and Mrs. Lester’s voice caught them on the stairs. “ _Leave the door open, boys – alright?_ ”

“Sorry about her,” Phil sighed as they entered a colorful mid-size bedroom. He deposited his galaxy backpack on the carpet and plopped onto a geometric bedspread. “She can sometimes be a little…yeah. Cookie?” Phil held out the grease-stained napkin. “I promise they’re not poison.”

Never one to turn down proffered sweets, Dan grabbed one from the top of the pile.

“Maybe that was your plan all along. Lure me here under false pretenses? Poison me with baked goods? I bet you just want to steal my part.” Dan bit into the cookie and practically moaned. “And I don’t even care because these are orgasmic. Holy fucking hell.”

Phil nodded solemnly. His hands flew up to the knot of his tie. “We faced the kitchen for a good cause.” With a sigh, he tugged the loop of fabric over his head, ruffling up his fringe. “I’m pretty sure my mum’s been baking more often just to get me out of my room. It’s a brilliant strategy, actually.”

Dan stared at the obviously open duvet space next to Phil, who’d gone on to unfasten the first two buttons of his shirt. Dan’s eyes flickered to Phil’s smattering of dark chest hair. Another glance around the room told Dan his only other seating option was a wooden desk chair. He bounced once on his toes before beginning to pace. “It’s cool that she’s actually making your costume, though.”

“She tries to be supportive,” Phil shrugged. He’d inched back until he was leaning against the headboard. He was in the process of rolling up his sleeves to the elbows. He raised an eyebrow at Dan, who continued to pace, scanning the posters on Phil’s walls and the DVDs on his shelves. Occasionally, he let out a hum of appreciation.

“So, uh,” said Phil. “Wanna start on act three? There’s this massive monologue I’m a little worried about.” He cleared his throat. “’ _My mistress is in love with a monster_.’ Or something like that.”

“Yeah, you’ve got it.” Dan nodded, moving to fish his play from the backpack he’d dropped near the foot of Phil’s bed. “You’ve totally got it. The failed romance of the Faerie Queen and the donkey.” Gingerly, eyes affixed to his script, Dan sat down on its edge. “Gives a whole new meaning to ‘fell in love with an arse,’ right?”

“Can you imagine dating a donkey? It’d be so furry. And it’d probably have to take, like, three baths a day just to get rid of the donkey smell.”

Dan snorted. “I don’t think we’re meant to be considering this seriously, Phil.”

“I just feel really bad for Titania. She’s faerie royalty after all and – what?”

Dan was shaking his head, smiling.

“What?” Phil repeated. “Is there chocolate on my face?” He swiped the back of his hand across his mouth.

“You just… you pronounced it right. _Titania_.”

Phil lips quirked up in a hesitant smile. He tilted his head to one side. “That’s not exactly the hard part. I’ve had a bit more trouble with the page-long speeches, to be honest.”

“So, um, what made you decide to audition for Midsummer in the first place?” Dan finally asked the question that he’d been wondering since day one. “Like, you kinda showed up out of nowhere. This year twelve with zero acting experience, who nobody knew, who’d never read Shakespeare…”

“You must think I’m this massive weirdo.”

“More like an enigma,” said Dan, without thinking. He felt his ears go warm. “I mean – you’re not a typical theatre kid. You’re tough to figure out.”

Phil ducked his head, so that his fringe set his eyes into shadow. “Not really. Short answer is my friend PJ convinced me. He’s in charge of scenery and special effects, and he was really excited about it all so I just sort of tagged along.”

In spite of himself, Dan felt a little let down. “Is there a long answer?”

Phil tugged his lower lip between his teeth. “Um –”

“You really don’t need to tell me anything, if you don’t want. Fuck. I shouldn’t have asked, sorry.”

“No, it’s fine. I just…” Phil seemed to steel himself, straightening up against the headboard and crossing his legs. “I guess I wanted one last shot to be myself, before I graduate and go off to uni and become an actual, real-life grownup, you know? And I thought, for all the time drama kids spend pretending to be other people, they’re all pretty good at being themselves.”

Dan found himself nodding, drawing his feet up onto the bed. “Right, yeah, I totally get that.” Unconsciously, he scooted a few centimeters closer to the bright-eyed boy across from him. “I mean – I could never stay away from it. All the Vince’s in the world couldn’t make me quit for good. I guess drama’s always been a better home than home for me.” He winced. “Shit, that’s really fucking cliché, but –”

“No, I know. I thought my mum would faint when I let on I’d joined the play. She doesn’t really see the humor in the whole ‘faerie’ thing.”

“Right, yeah,” Dan bounced once on the mattress. Their knees bumped and they stayed touching. “Talk about irony. I can’t even bring it up at the dinner table without summoning the fucking Spanish Inquisition.”

“They don’t get it,” said Phil. Dan was looking into his eyes, thinking that they weren’t quite blue. On top of the blue was green, with bits of yellow swirled in like a galaxy, like those gourmet lollipops he used to beg his mum to buy at the natural history museum. Phil’s eyes weren’t quite as simple as blue. Just as Dan was thinking so, the existence of his hand – braced nonchalantly on a fabric square – was brought very much into prominence by virtue of Phil’s hand resting on top of it.

“I think I’m starting to get that home thing, though,” said Phil. Dan’s eyes were drawn to his pink tongue darting out between his lips. “Like, when I came out –”

“Wait, what?” Dan straightened up, away from where he’d been hunching toward Phil.

Phil blinked, and then frowned. “Um.”

“You’re gay?”

“And you’re…” Phil glanced down at his hand, still on top of Dan’s. “Not.”

When Phil slowly removed his hand, it was like life had jumped back into it. Dan relocated it to his lap, clasping his hands together. He shifted backwards so that nothing on their bodies would be touching any longer.

Phil winced. “God, I feel like an enormous idiot.” 

“Why’d you think I was…” Dan trailed off, not daring to end with what people had been calling him since middle school. “So when Vince was picking on you –”

“It’s a bit harder to hear when it’s true.”

“I should – I better go.”

“No – shit,” said Phil, when Dan stumbled off the bed and to his feet. “Dan, you really don’t have to –”

“It’s not – it’s my mum.” Dan was zipping up his backpack. “I forgot to tell her I was coming over here and she’s been texting like mad.” He was moving toward the door, avoiding Phil’s eyes. “I’ll see you at rehearsal tomorrow though.”

“Yeah,” said Phil, just as Dan was closing the bedroom door. “See you.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work was originally posted on my Tumblr (under the same username).


	9. Go for Blue

The next day, Louise was condemned to lunch detention with Dan.

“I ran into Mrs. Buzzkill Babington,” she said, waving her sparkly hot pink nails. “Couldn’t be bothered, honestly. I still think they look fab, and now I get to spend some extra time with my bestest pal.”

Mr. Linden shushed them from the front of the fluorescent-lit classroom, despite the fact that Dan had done little more than hum in response. Louise leaned back in her chair, angry pout on her lips.

“What I wouldn’t give to steal that diseased meerkat from his dumb head,” she murmured.

“Juvenile delinquency wouldn’t suit you, Louise.”

“Excuse you, I would be the best delinquent.” Dan’s phone buzzed for the third time in as many minutes, and Louise eyed his pocket with suspicion. “Someone’s popular.”

“It’s my mum.”

“That hardly looks like mum face to me.” Louise grinned slyly. “Are you hiding a date or something? Is there a secret girlfriend? Come on, then, Dan – dish.”

“There’s no secret girlfriend,” said Dan, and when Louise’s eyebrows retreated further into her hairline, he added, “There’s definitely no secret whatever the hell you’re thinking. There are generally no secrets, okay?”

Dan’s phone buzzed again.

“And he’s not even going to look at it.” Louise shook her blonde head at him. “No wonder you never answer my texts. Someone could be dying, Dan. You’d never know.”

“You’re ridiculous,” said Dan, relenting. But just as he was pulling out his phone to pretend a glance at it, Louise snatched it from his hand.

“I’m sorry – you’ve been texting faerie boy _since when_?” Wide-eyed, she looked up from the phone with a thrilled sort of indignation. “Were you planning on sharing that juicy tidbit?”

Damage done, Dan let Louise simmer while he grabbed back his phone, switched it off, and tossed it unceremoniously into his backpack.

“Just drop it, Louise. For fuck’s sake…”

“Well, what’re you ignoring him for? I know you’re not his biggest fan, but there’s no need to be rude.”

“Didn’t I ask you to drop it?” Dan was rapidly losing patience. The phone at the bottom of his bag felt like a living creature he’d inadequately caged.

Louise sighed. “Yes, sir, mister grumpy face.” Dan had barely a few seconds of silent bliss before Louise perked up again. “Look, I’m sorry I looked at your phone. But you can’t exactly fault me for worrying when my best friend’s been acting dodgy all day and it turns out he’s gone and replaced me with faerie boy.”

“I’ve been helping him with lines, alright? We’re not friends.”

“ _Hey, girls_!” Mr. Linden called at them. Dan flinched. “Quit the gossiping or it’ll be another two weeks for the both of you. Pentland – stay where you are. Howell, you get to come up front with me.”

* * *

“I’m gonna do it,” said Dan, breathing heavy as he rushed off-stage, following a particularly energetic monologue.

Chris didn’t look up from where, under the guise of marking up his script, he was on his phone playing Words with Friends. “Sorry, what?” He let out a disgruntled snort when ‘wanker’ was deemed unacceptable for a triple-word score. A spare glance up at Dan’s face – and its cool-eyed, hard-lipped intensity – had him putting the game on pause.

With a hand gingerly braced on Dan’s shoulder, he said, “You look like you’re gonna pop an aneurism.” Chris tugged Dan a few steps backward toward the nearest nest of chairs. Even when Chris guided him to sitting, Dan all the while kept his eyes glued to the stage, where Analise clutched at her chest and moaned in anguish through the act’s final lines. “So, now that we’re practicing our calming breaths… you’re gonna do what?”

“Winter dance is on Saturday, right?”  

Chris laughed. “God, do people still go to that bow tie and punchbowl shit-fest?” He gave Dan, who was fuming, the once-over. “Ah, sorry, forgot you were twelve.”

Dan wasted no time in socking him in the arm.

“Aren’t they calling it Blue Balls or something this year?” Chris continued. “I’d like to shake the hand of whoever headed up that planning committee.”

“Shut up.”

It was ‘Snow Ball,’ for the record, but not telling Chris was really only saving Dan time. He forgot about Chris, anyway, when Analise finally finished her speech – either death or you I’ll find immediately – and flew off stage right, opposite to where they were seated. “I’m just gonna fucking do it,” Dan repeated, with a bit of added flavor.  

Chris looked at him, looked where he was looking, and put two and two together.

“Shouldn’t have told me that, mate.”

When Chris clicked a wink at him, Dan stiffened immediately, and his suspicions only quadrupled when his friend began sauntering toward the wings.

“What are you…” Dan trailed off as Chris brushed past the blue velvet curtains and took two large steps onto the stage. Dan was on his feet, calling out “Shit, _wait_!”

If only it wasn’t too late.

“Hey, Analise!”

From just past the darkness of stage right, the girl in question spun around – all inquisitive smile and soft brown braids swinging. Chris moved to meet her at the center of the stage, with Dan observing this absolute disaster from the safety of the curtains. He contemplated rolling up in their filthy expanses and assuming the role of a dust bunny.  

“Would you stop caressing the curtains and get your arse over here.”  

Dan blinked, releasing the handful of velvet he’d somehow collected in his last several seconds of deafened shock.

“See, Dan’s always been susceptible to the allure of drapery,” said Chris, shaking his head sadly. “Curtains, carpeting, occasionally a nice lampshade – he finds it all very distracting.”

Dan was close enough now to spot Analise’s white teeth behind the hand she drew up to block her grin.

“So, Chris says you had something to ask me?”

Dan was going to kill Chris, reanimate him, and double tap his brain-dead zombie head.

“Um –”

“Hey, Dan!” Dan whirled around to see Phil bounding toward him. He stopped short half a meter away, glancing between the three already gathered there. Sheepishness followed shortly after him, bringing color to his cheeks.

Dan was doubly overwhelmed.

“Hi, uh,” said Phil, flashing a short smile before looking down. “Alexis is blocking the players’ scene, but I’ve got a bunch of dialogue coming up, and since you’re not on for a while, I was wondering if you were free to run lines…”

Briefly lifting his head to brush back his fringe, Phil’s hesitant blue eyes met Dan’s just long enough for Dan’s breath to catch.

“I can run with you,” said Chris. “Got nothing better to do but homework and I’ve only got seven months of prison time left to clock so yeah, _no_ , that won’t be happening.” After an extended pause, he added, “If you’ll take me on as substitute of course.”

Still with his gaze on Dan, Phil said, “Yeah, that’d be great. Thank you.”

Chris made like he was going to loop an arm around Phil’s shoulders, but upon finding him a little too tall for comfort, settled for grasping his upper arm instead.

“Seems Dan’s a bit preoccupied anyway.” Chris coughed, a little too suggestively. He began to lead Phil away.

“Sorry,” Dan tried to call out, but his voice got stuck in his throat. His apology was barely loud enough to make Phil turn around, and it utterly lacked the power to produce a smile that reached Phil’s eyes.

“Come on, it’s about time we get to know each other, seeing as you’ll be squirting your pistol juices at me in a few days’ time.”

Phil spluttered, eyes clouding over with confusion.

“The flower, mate!” Chris exclaimed, which seemed to tense up Phil’s shoulders by another centimeter. “Prop shop’s a’humming. Alexis says my sword’ll be ready to slice and dice by Monday.”

“You know, the pistol’s actually the girl part of the plant,” said Phil, just before they moved out of Dan’s earshot.  

“So, um, did you actually have to say something? Because I don’t know about Chris but I still can’t seem to help caring about those pesky A-levels.”

Dan started. Analise was looking at him expectantly, if not a little impatiently.

“Sorry, um – promise this won’t take long.”

“Okay,” she paused, waiting for him to go on, and when he didn’t, she added, “What’s up?”

“Do you want to go to blue balls, I mean, snow balls, I mean – for fuck’s sake – would you like to go to the winter dance with me?”

“Oh,” Analise said. In the second before her face reacted, Dan’s pulse was the loudest thing in his head; his thoughts were startlingly quiet.

Finally, she smiled. “Yeah, okay. I think that’d be nice – even if it is a dance with a stupid name.”

“Okay?” said Dan, to be sure.

“I think Ms. Alexis is calling everyone into the audience, but we’ll figure out the details. We see enough of each other that it shouldn’t be a problem,” she said, and Dan forced a laugh.

Shortly, he found himself in the audience, trying and failing to pay attention to Ms. Alexis’s notes. Dan waved once at Analise, seated in the front row left of center, before she got lost in careful notebook scribbling. To his right, toward the back of the theatre, he swore he could feel Phil’s eyes boring into him. Once or twice, Dan couldn’t resist looking back. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was originally posted on my Tumblr (under the same username).


	10. True Love

“Is Louise over?”

Dan sighed. Barely two steps through the door and he already had his mum prodding at the tack that had been twinging in his side all day.

“Shall I wrap up another potato?” 

He broke the bad news. No, lovely Louise would not be staying for dinner. For the first time in as many days as Dan could remember, Louise would not be coming over at all. Or so Dan assumed, since he had been steadfastly ignoring her texts since today’s lunch detention. He wasn’t quite ready to pick out the tack yet.

“Oh, that’s too bad,” said Dan’s mum. He’d sprouted some excuse, probably to do with homework—that was pretty foolproof when it came to parents. Before he could make his way upstairs, she added, “Come in here for a second, would you, Dan?”  

He sighed, louder than the first time. It had been a fatal mistake not to run after the potato-related inquiries. He kicked off his shoes and dragged his feet to the kitchen.

His mother was sat at the kitchen counter in front of a cutting board and an onion cut clean in half. She smiled at him, which unsettled him more than any scolding might have. “I feel like we haven’t seen you for weeks.”

His discomfort increased. He stared down at his black and white checkered socks. They were his favorite, and it showed—his big toe had started to poke through the fabric. He found this sad in a deep way that didn’t make much sense. “Yeah, sorry, I mean I’ve been really busy with the play and—”

“I know,  _I know_. You’re a teenager, I know. Just sit for a minute, huh, Dan? Make yourself useful.”  She handed him a sharp knife and half the onion, and he sunk down onto the stool beside her.  

Dan could count on one hand the number of so-called real conversations he’d had with his mother. Normally they danced around each other seamlessly, a well-rehearsed routine of small talk, the occasional mandated hug, and emotions with the edges chipped off.

This was hardly different. He spoke about the play as if it were consuming another person’s life, a person he didn’t care for very much. She tolerated the topic, but smiled only hollowly and asked only a few cursory questions, ensuring that the discussion didn’t carry on for long. They kept chopping onions.

“Oh!” His mum exclaimed, after a silence that went on long enough for Dan to strategize escape options. “Your brother’s taking Delilah to some school dance on Saturday.” Dan straightened up a little. “It nearly slipped my mind. I’ve got an appointment with Trent—see, my roots are coming in, awful to spot the grey. Anyway, I can’t drive him, and I don’t feel right about him wandering the streets at god knows when that thing lets out.”

Dan wiped his sleeve across his stinging eyes. “I’m barely older. Pretty sure he’s got thirty pounds on me, as well.”

“What’ll it take, Dan?” She insisted, blinking her eyes hard in the face of what he thought were entirely valid points. The onions fumes were affecting her more strongly. “A bonus on your allowance? Extra hour on the curfew?”

Maybe she could come to opening night, sit front row center, and buy him a nice bouquet. Maybe she could come to another show after that. Maybe she could bring along Grandma.

“Come on, do you have something better to do on a Friday night, then?” she laughed. The thought of Dan actually having plans with actual friends was laughable to her.

“I’ll take him,” he said, slicing the last pale sliver into two. “Can’t guarantee I’ll stick with him though.” He put down the knife. “I’ve got a date.”

“Seriously?” His mother’s shock was too predictable to be funny.

“Believe it or not.”

She folded both hands over the handle of her knife and bit her lip.

“Is—are  _they_ … is it a friend of yours? Do I know…  _them_?” Though her voice stayed pleasantly calm, her eyes had welled up with onion tears.

“ _She_  is called Analise. I asked her today at rehearsal.” For good measure, and because it was true enough, he added, “I fancy her quite a lot.”

“Oh! You met her from the play!” She announced it like a revelation. A single tear trickled down the thin, lightly purpled skin beneath her eye, but she brushed it away before it could hit her cheekbone. “That’s—that’s great. That’s just wonderful, Dan.” She placed her cool hand on top of his. “I’d love to hear more about her. I’d love to meet her! I’m sure your father would too. He should be home soon.” She glanced at the stovetop clock, and Dan was suddenly overwhelmed by the desire not to do this all over again.

“Shit—the potatoes!”  

That was Dan’s cue.

“I’ve got a massive project on the post-war Yugoslavian economy.”

Homework—always a good excuse.

“That’s nice, honey.”

“See you.”

“You better bring your Analise here on Friday!” Dan’s mum raised her voice louder as he mounted the first steps to his bedroom. “I’ll be very cross if I don’t get pictures of my handsome boys in suits!”

* * *

Dan’s prompt arrival to rehearsal the next day was rewarded with an empty auditorium. He was still avoiding Louise. They were fine. It would all be fine, but he really could go another day spared from her patented brand of good-natured prying. Dan hardly had enough energy to get out of bed this morning, let alone experience the joys of healthy communication.

Occupied by these and other thoughts, it took Dan the full journey from the door to the front of the stage to realize that he wasn’t entirely alone. Phil was hidden just beyond the curtains. With him, standing close, was a shorter, curly-haired boy. The boy’s hands were on Phil’s waist, with Phil’s hands braced in turn on the boy’s shoulders—like year eight slow dancing. Dan froze. Without really thinking about it, he let his backpack slide off him and thump loudly onto the nearest seat.

Phil jumped. At the sight of Dan, his face seemed to collapse in on itself. Just a little.  

“Dan.” He short-stepped away from the curly-haired boy at the same second the boy stepped closer to him. Net distance: zero. “Uh, this is my friend. PJ.”

The name churned unpleasantly in Dan’s memory. “Oh, the scene designer, right?” He wondered if his polite tone was really as brittle as it sounded in his head. Ignoring the fact that PJ hadn’t once looked at him, Dan trod up the stage steps with his hand stuck out at half-mast. “It’s nice to meet you, I’m—”

“You’ve spoken of me before,” PJ murmured to Phil, eyes shimmering.

“Once or twice, maybe. In passing.”

PJ nodded solemnly. “You’ve told tales of our kinship’s blossoming.” Past shimmering, his eyes now welled up and threatened to spill over. “Like a bold April flower, I’ve grown. Past the frost of callowness and toward your light.”  

“He’s just helping me practice lines,” said Phil, unconvincingly.

Taking advantage of Phil’s momentary lapse in attention, PJ nosedived into Phil’s hair and inhaled deeply. “You smell of springtime, oh sunshine prince.”

“He gets really into character.”

Dan knew his Shakespeare as well as he knew his sarcasm, and this was neither. Like picking at a scab, he had to ask.

“Is he your, um—are you and he, like, you know…”

“No!” Phil’s eyes were perfect ovals. “God, we’re pretty much brothers.” The credibility of his word, however, was a little offset by the fact that this so-called brother had spent the last thirty seconds trying to excavate Phil’s ear with his tongue. Phil held him at arm’s length. “Besides, Peej is straight, right Peej?”

“Such limitations pale in the face of true love,” PJ scoffed.

Phil blinked. Dan took a moment to let it all sink in. PJ wrapped two arms and a leg around Phil’s torso.

“Well, um,” said Phil, chancing a peek down at the grinning, boy-shaped moss he seemed to have spontaneously grown, “PJ needs to go now.”

Phil took a burdened step toward the wings.

“I thought—we have rehearsal.” Dan wasn’t sure why he felt the need to underline this point.

“I’ll be right back, promise!” Phil looked down again at PJ, who was contentedly nuzzling into his neck. He hesitated before adding, “If Alexis notices, just tell her I’m going over some set design plans.”

“No problem.” Against his will, Dan felt his face morph into a smirk.

“I shall craft for us a paradise befitting of your alabaster cheek.” PJ cradled Phil’s chin in his palm. “Your eyes bright as jewels.” Phil shot a glance at Dan, prompting PJ’s hand to tighten its grip. Phil laughed shakily through fish-puckered lips. “Your mouth flush as sunset.”

When he swooped in for a kiss, Dan experienced a sensation most immediately comparable to his heart plummeting into stomach acid. But Phil escaped with a well-timed duck.

“We’re leaving.” It was a struggle to hear him clearly, considering he’d clamped both hands over his mouth. “Come on, Peej.”

Phil grabbed his wrist to tug him offstage. Dan didn’t see why there was any need; PJ seemed happy to trot after him undirected.

“We fly!” PJ demonstrated an impressive ability to project. “Away from prying eyes our lovers’ journey carries us.”

“PJ— _no_ ,” Phil scolded. After a few steps, all the while wrestling to keep his admirer at a safe distance, he turned back with a tight smile. “Nice talking to you, Dan! Thanks!”

“Yeah, nice talking to—you, too…” Dan trailed off into baffled silence. The unlikely pair of them had already rushed past the curtains and out of sight.

“That was…” Dan heard a high whistling noise from close behind him. He spun around to see Chris, munching on crisps and shaking his head.

“Christ, how long have you been lurking for?”

“Long enough,” said Chris. While Dan had been preoccupied with the spectacle, the auditorium had filled out a quite a bit more. Analise and Carrie were coming through the double doors now, chatting animatedly. Dan locked eyes with the former, looking awfully pretty with a pink ribbon tying off her plait, and lifted his hand in a wave. She flashed a small smile at him before returning her attention to her friend.

Chris droned on. “Hey, if my gaydar swung straight all the time it’d get boring.  _Nay_ —it’d defeat the point. You ever peg Lester for queer, then?”

The question, while asked casually enough, was like a dozen pinpricks to Dan’s spine.

“Never thought about it one way or the other, to be perfectly fucking honest.”

“Easy there, mate,” said Chris, holding up his crisps bag. Whether in offering or defense, Dan couldn’t tell. “What’s got in your knickers?”

“Ever thought about minding your own bloody business?” Dan scrubbed a hand through his fringe. Wherever this anger was coming from, it was spooling out of him like bright red thread. He struggled to make something, anything of it. “Let’s just get back to it, then. We’ve got the big fight scene coming up.”

“Happy to.” Chris’s mouth was a thin line. It broke momentarily to accept another chip, and then returned to its severity. “For the record, I’ve thought terribly long and hard about it. The whole ‘not being a nosy jackass’ thing. Afraid I don’t suit it.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work was originally published on my Tumblr (under the same username).


	11. Fly Away Hide Away

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning for bullying, homophobic slurs.

The next day Phil came to school in wings.

Louise, who had cornered Dan at his locker, cut herself off before she could get much past her earnest opening statement in the case for their reconciliation. She stared over his shoulder for a second and then frantically backhanded his arm.

“I know we’re not supposed to speak of Faerie Boy,” she said, in hushed tones, “But, my god, just look at him.”

Dan looked. The wings were large, reaching half a foot past his head and all the way down to his ankles. The largeness only emphasized that they were also, quite genuinely, beautiful. The off-white, intricately beaded lace of them hugged and draped off a wire frame, balancing the line between elegant and ghostly. Phil himself was like an apparition—pale skin a shade or two off from and dark hair a stark contrast to what in that moment Dan wouldn’t have doubted were his very own wings. 

“He’s become faerie _man_.”

Phil slouched, glanced around, and fiddled with the strap on his shoulder. The moment was gone.

“He must’ve brought them for rehearsal. Alexis’s been telling us to start practicing with our major props.”

As Phil turned down the hallway perpendicular to theirs, Dan took note of the awkward way he was clutching his backpack to his upper arm. He could push it no higher, or risk the wings. A deep purple rose protruded from its side pocket. Dan barely caught sight of it before Phil and his backpack and his wings disappeared from sight.

“Major props to him—I mean, damn... ” At the blank look on Dan’s face, Louise rolled her eyes exasperatedly. “Shit, sorry. I’ll stop.”

For once, Dan was relieved to have detention. It made for an easy, if not clean, getaway; Louise refused to let him leave before he agreed to meet up with her later. _After rehearsal_ , he promised, vaguely.

“They’re not dress-code,” Phil explained, stuck in detention with him. It hadn’t been so easy a getaway after all.

The galaxy backpack was lodged between Phil’s feet. His wings had been placed over the back of his chair, looking as slumped and morose as he did. “They kept hitting people. I swear they wouldn’t fit in my locker. It’s not like I wanted to walk around school looking like—like a… It’s just frustrating.” He shook his head, dividing his fringe into choppy chunks. “I’ve had a weird couple days.”

Phil worried a petal of that same long-stemmed purple flower between his fingertips. Dan took a hard look at where it poked out curiously from the pocket of Phil’s backpack. He’d been half convinced he imagined it. From far away, it had looked like a rose, but now he wasn’t sure. It didn’t look quite like anything he’d seen in a shop. Dan suppressed his pang of curiosity.

“They’re really cool though,” he said, hating how false he sounded. Under florescent lights and removed from their owner, the wings seemed gaudy and immaterial. They were less than cool and they were more. “You’ve blown all our costumes to the great beyond. Alexis is gonna self-combust.”

“She can keep them, when all this is over. Maybe the prop closet will eat them.”

The door crashed open. Mr. Linden’s trainer-clad foot entered before the bulk of him. He was late, arms overflowing with long rolls of paper and cheap colored markers. To Dan’s great thrill, a similarly burdened Vince trailed in behind him.

“Afternoon, ladies!” Linden shouted, dumping it all onto the teacher’s desk. A single orange marker rolled off the metal edge all the way over to Dan’s shoe.  

He did not bend to pick it up.

“Considering you’re a bunch of delinquents,” Linden allowed himself a chuckle. “The school board’s decided to put you to work.”

 For the rest of the period, they were instructed to decorate posters for—of all things—the Snow Ball.

“Isn’t there, like, a committee for that,” asked someone from the back of the room.

“Sure there is,” said Linden cheerfully. He gestured to his smirking partner in crime. “Vince here’s the head of it. Now get cracking. And color in the lines.”

Dan quickly found the blackest sharpie in the box and began filling in block letters. For a few minutes, the only thing that could be heard in the room was displeased grumbling and the faint squeak of markers on paper. Linden sat at the teacher’s desk. Vince hadn’t left, but stayed perched on the desk’s corner like a guard dog. 

“So, um,” Dan murmured, “You’re not going to the…” He gestured to his paper. He’d gotten as far as SNOW BA. “Are you?”

The snowflake Phil was coloring went a darker shade of blue as he pressed harder on the marker. “Doubt it.”

“Yeah, I mean—right.” Dan felt foolish for asking. Phil was a senior. He was gay. Of course he wasn’t. Then again, he and PJ had been awfully cozy yesterday.

“Watch yourself, Lester, you’re gonna go through the bloody paper,” called Vince. “Don’t you want it nice for your boyfriend?”

Vince knew as well as Dan did that they couldn’t say anything back in front of Linden. Phil’s mouth twisted, but he let up a bit on the marker.

“Watch the language, Vincent, this is a classroom,” said Linden. “And Lester’s a flight risk.”

Low snickering crawled up the walls.

* * *

Just before rehearsal, Dan saw the wings again. They were displayed at his eye level on the adjacent wall of lockers, spanning five across. Held up by silver duct tape, they were splayed flat like a bird blown off-course and into the living room window. The delicate lace of them had been torn in several places, wire poking through like fractured bone. Across them, in ugly, careful, bright-red letters was a single word that slashed at Dan’s gut. _Faggot._

* * *

Dan bounded onto the field with full, fast strides. He wasted no time with suspicions or fair trials.

“You _absolute_ _shit_.”

His expectant, gleeful face was loathsome. “Something I can do for you, poofter.”

“Fucking spare me, Vince. I know it was you.”

“Dunno what you’re talking about.” He crouched down to double knot his trainers. The lack of eye contact only fueled Dan’s fury.

“Just fucking admit it. Own up to it. Nothing could make your face any more nauseating.”

Vince straightened up. At his full height, he barely had to lift his chin to meet Dan’s gaze.

“Big talk from a bloke I knocked into the dirt last week.” With the first two fingers of his right hand, Vince prodded Dan in the chest with enough force to set him off-balance. He fell half a step backwards. The coin-sized spot was burning.

Smirking, Vince said, “Cute how you’re standing up for your fag boyfriend.”

Dan socked him in the face.

Since this was his first time legitimately punching a person, he wasn’t sure whether it was normal to feel like you’d dislocated your thumb and your knuckles had gone through the war. He wasn’t sure if it normally felt so fucking good. It felt good to see Vince’s eyes bug and it felt good to hear his stupid nose crack and it felt good to watch a line of blood trickle from beneath it.  

The return punch caught him by surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to everyone who's been supporting this fic for a while, as well as those you've just gotten on board with it. This is the first new chapter I've posted on Ao3.


	12. Watch the World Stand Still

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything goes to hell (basically).

“What the bloody hell happened?”

“Hi mum.”

“I was in the middle of an important budget meeting when I get a call from the school—from the _principal_ , no less—saying my son got himself into a fight. Not that he was bullied, or coerced, but that he _got himself_ into it. Maybe I would’ve expected this from your brother, but you, Dan?”

Dan shrugged. “Sorry.”

It hurt to shrug. His mum quit her frantic pacing to take a good look at him, seated in a carpet-upholstered chair outside of Principal Windsor’s office. He’d lost track of time waiting out there, waiting while Coach Linden no doubt made a case for either his suspension or his execution. He was missing rehearsal, waiting on them both.

“Oh, I could really do without the sass right— _Christ_ , Dan.” She tumbled into the seat beside him, wasting no time in grabbing his bruised face. When he winced, her eyebrows oscillated between fury and concern. “Haven’t they let a nurse look at you, at least?”

He was all right, mostly. Vince had only gotten in a couple of hits before Linden broke them up. After that, Linden had been so focused on attending to his star athlete that Dan’s health became somewhat of a second priority.

Dan lifted up his left fist. The juncture between hand and thumb was swollen and dully throbbing. “It’s probably fine,” he said. 

“Oh, honey.”

From behind the office door, Dan heard a muffled thump like a book falling onto carpet.

“So, are you going to tell me how this happened? Or do I have to summon your father to help drag it out of you?”

A louder noise, less a thump and more a metallic crashing, stole her attention.

“What _is_ that unpleasant man doing in there? Raving?”

Before Dan could ask his mother where she’d heard about raving, the door flew open. It slammed shut again the next moment—Dan barely glimpsed the room beyond—and in front of it was a person who really should’ve been in rehearsal or home or anywhere else but right here, right now.

“Phil?”

“Dan.” He frowned. “What happened to your face?”

“Accident,” Dan went with. “What’re you doing here?”

“I may have ‘caused a disturbance’.” Phil laughed, his eyes somewhat frantic. It was then that Dan noticed he was not merely leaning on the door, but holding it closed. His hands were hidden behind his back.

“Is this a friend of yours?” Dan’s mum asked. He’d forgotten she was there.

“ _Philip… Michael_ … _LESTER!_ ”

The door behind Phil jumped on its hinges.

“Is that your mum?”

“Open up right this instant! I don’t appreciate this kind of behavior, I hope you know that.”

“In a minute!”

Mrs. Lester—for Dan was now certain this was she—pounded on the door again.

“No, now, I won’t wait a minute. I haven’t the foggiest what’s happening and this man is, well, you see, I haven’t got an issue with it, of course, but now it looks like he's about to, it appears that very soon he's going to, well… _oh my_.”

“Just give me a second!” Phil called again, with a shaky grin. Dan wasn’t sure what he was waiting for. His own mother stayed reticent, despite the fact that she undoubtedly had a few firm words on the subject of locking mothers in principal’s offices.

“Alright, there, I’ve turned around. Listen, love, it’s not about the wings. There’s still loads of fabric left over—that dress was a dreadfully poufy thing. But the play…” Mrs. Lester sighed. Phil glanced over at them like they were witnessing his death sentence at trial. “If this is what’s going to come of it, well—is it worth it, really?”

Something in the set of Phil’s mouth resolved itself. He stepped back and turned the doorknob.

“Sorry, mum,” he said.

From behind his back, he pulled the strange purple flower from earlier. Dan blinked once and once again, but this was no trick of the light. He actually had witnessed Phil brandish the flower like a sword and squirt his mum in the face with it. Mrs. Lester gasped and rubbed at her eyes.

Phil looked from his mum to Dan and back again. His eyes bulged.

“Dan, duck!”

Reflexively, Dan obeyed him.

“ _I’ve ne’er known beauty ‘til this day_ ,” said Mrs. Lester, though Dan doubted it was her for a moment from the change in her voice, “ _I pray thee, goddess, do not stray_.”

Dan quit his ducking. Mrs. Lester’s entire face was illuminated. She was gazing directly over him, and when he sat up, through him, like he blended into the slate-colored wall. Mrs. Lester had eyes only for his mother. 

“I’m… sorry?”

Phil bit his lip, glancing warily between the two. “On second thought,” he said, and lifted the flower once more.

“Careful where you’re pointing that thing, you’ll poke someone’s—” Dan’s mum yelped, covering her eyes. “What the…” She trailed off as she locked her gaze on Mrs. Lester. Her face and all the fight in it went slack at once.

“Phil, what the  _hell_  is going on? ” Dan lowered his voice to a hiss. He prodded his mum uselessly in the arm. “Wait, where are you going!”

Flower in hand, Phil was already halfway down the hall. He slowed in his awkward jog for a quick look back.

He grinned. “I’ve got people to change,”

Dan turned to his mother, but she was no longer sitting beside him. He had the urge to call out for her, like a lost kid in the grocery store. But, wait—there she was. Strolling down the hallway, hand in hand with Mrs. Lester. Dan subjected his head to a violent shake.

“Mum!” He shouted. “Mum, what are you... you can’t just—we still have to meet with the bloody principal!”

The door cracked open a smidgen, and none other than Principal Windsor popped out his large, red head. 

“Did I hear someone—” He caught sight of Dan. “Oh, Mr. Howell, that’s right— _Jerry, stop that_ ,” Principal Windsor hissed, “I’m afraid we’ll have to— _that’s not appropriate behavior, Jerry_ —postpone our appointment— _I have a wife—_ perhaps until— _we both have wives, Jerry—_ let’s say next week. Goodbye!”

A gust of air from the slamming door blew Dan’s fringe askew.

“What,” he mumbled to himself, involuntarily.

Since Dan wasn’t really sure what to do with himself, he wandered through the halls like a ghost. Around the first corner he turned, this nerdy dude from his maths class was walking toward him, his arm around the waist of another boy whose head lolled onto his shoulder. When Dan made eye contact with them, they didn’t jump apart. Maths dude only smiled, and gave him a wave. A little further down the hall, a couple of girls still clad in their cheerleading uniforms were making out against a locker. Shortly thereafter, Dan spotted a muscled guy in a rugby jersey—actually one of Vince’s cronies—tug another boy by the hand into an abandoned classroom.

“What,” said Dan, “What?”

He found himself in front of the auditorium. He wasn’t sure if rehearsal was even still happening, but it drew him in like a hypnotist. Slowly, he cracked open the double doors.

He looked. And he looked. Titania, a comely girl in her long practice skirt, cradled Hippolyta’s face in her hands. The junior playing Oberon had lifted up shrimpy sophomore Nick Bottom by his, well, bottom, and the two boys kissed furiously against the set’s giant papier-mâché tree. The fairies had mostly paired off with fairies, and the players with players. Right at center stage the burliest fairy girl had stolen a foam prop sword and was bludgeoning the tallest player boy to the ground. A small fairy boy hid behind his overlarge messenger bag, every so often imploring them to stop and inching away when they didn’t.

“What—what the _fuck_?”

Ms. Alexis stood in the middle of it all, wryly smiling.

“Dan?” Someone called, from somewhere behind him. Louise. Keeping true to the post-rehearsal meeting she’d scheduled for them. “Thank god, I’ve been waiting around for ages, all by my lonesome.” Dan was still staring, too dumbfounded to even acknowledge her. “Faerie Boy just dashed by. I think he may have actually _spat_ at me. He didn’t even stop to apologize or anything. _Rude._ And, just, you know, odd. Hello? Attention Daniel? What’re you even—”

He felt her warm hand on his shoulder, turning him around to meet his eyes.

“Oh no. No, no.”

“Thy chocolate orbs bring warmth to my bosom.”

“ _Shit._ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your lovely feedback! Keep it coming, because it is my fuel.


	13. Hideout

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Think of this chapter as the calm before the storm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late-ish update! Been on vacation and started school. The reaction I got to the last chapter was basically "wait woah wtf" which is kind of what Dan's going through at the moment too, so worry not friends. All things will become clear in time.

 Later, after Dan had barricaded himself in his bedroom for the night, he got a call from the only person he was currently willing to pick up the phone for.

“Believe me, I’d come over if I could. Mum’s afraid I’ll catch the gay.”

“Please tell me how you’re so fucking nonchalant.” Dan sat cross-legged on the edge of his bed, too wired to relax.

“Are you kidding—this is the best thing that’s ever happened. This is Liza-Hendricks-shat-in-the-hamster-cage good. _Better_ ,” Chris enthused. “So we’re running through the third act, or floundering through, with you and Lester both MIA.”

The bruise coloring Dan’s cheekbone gave a sharp twinge, insubordinate to the three Ibuprofens he’d popped to silence it. He glanced up resentfully at his reflection in the perpendicular door-length mirror. He was glad for the absence of Chris’s company if it meant not having to explain the very obvious evidence of today’s insurrection against Vince. It wouldn’t even be a matter of lying or telling the truth. Both were equally wiggly to Dan at the moment.

“I go to the loo for two minutes, right,” Chris continued. “And when I come back, everyone’s getting their mack on. Just fucking going at it. It’s too good to be true.”

A dozen disconnected questions pin-balled around Dan’s mind, searching for a bell to ring and a light to flash.

The one he asked was, “And you’re positive you didn’t see Analise?”

“Not during the Glorious Mack-out. Sorry, mate.”

His phone buzzed in his ear.

“I heard that, was that—” But Dan didn’t catch the rest, because he was already checking the screen. Analise hadn’t texted him back all day; the dance was tomorrow.

He sighed. “No. Just my dad, freaking out, again. Mum’s still not back.” Dan raked his free hand through his hair. “And he wants me to come to dinner, which—fuck that, considering it’s probably overdone pasta and leftover meatballs. God, they were hardly edible the first time.”

“Right then, Master Chef Ramsey.”

“Fuck off. I’m panicked and starving.”

Briefly, Dan thought about sitting his father down and telling him that Mum had run off with his gay theater acquaintance’s single mother. Living in his bedroom eternally was altogether the better option. Besides, it was a lot harder for Louise to spot him two stories up and through heavy blinds.

“Think they deliver pizza to second story windows?”

“It’s already on the news, you know? _Local school witnesses epidemic of lewd homosexual displays._ ” Chris recited, clipping the words exaggeratedly. “ _Parents concerned._ It would be hilarious, and it is, except for that they’re trying to pin it all on Ms. Alexis.”

“What?” Dan asked. He was momentarily floored.

“Yeah. She’s this massive lesbo, apparently. It’s not even a secret, really, if you know your way around the Google. Like she’s written all these radical, lady-loving type plays, and I downloaded the script for _Coochie Caresser_ , which really sounds like it’d be an eighties porno, right, but it’s actually a really gorgeous piece of theatre and I think I’d be perfect to play—”

“Chris.”

“Right. Anyway—she’s the prime suspect in Salem, Ass-achoo-sex.”

Dan tried to reconcile this new information with his image of the drama teacher. Her long skirts and clacking bracelets and knowing green eyes. To his surprise, the image changed little—the colors of her grew deeper and he did not like her less.

“Shit,” Dan said. He didn't elaborate, because he didn’t his need his worry for the play doubled by its confirmation in another person. 

“But do you really think,” Chris hesitated, catching Dan’s attention. “Did two dozen people just explode out of the closet?”

“I don’t know.” He couldn’t mention Phil, or that strange flower. The memory was too bizarre to his own senses to merit being voiced.

“And you haven’t been feeling any…differently?”

Hyper-attuned to that particular inflection and suggestion, Dan blurted out, “No! No, have you?”

“No…” Chris laughed softly. “It’s funny. I almost feel left out.”

Dan was unable to tell whether or not he was joking, so he decided the conversation had reached its organic end.

“I’d better get going, or my father may force feed me his pasta monstrosity.”

There was a second of static silence. “Yeah, text me when you hear from Analise— _when_. Oh, I’m going stag to Blue Balls, by the way. Like all the cool kids.”

“You’re going?” Dan chose to ignore that last part. His favorite button-up was already hung up on the closet doorknob. Before she’d gone on the lam, his mum had ironed his best slacks, ignoring protestations that he’d be sticking with skinny jeans, thanks very much.

Chris scoffed. “You expect me to miss the most magnificent shit-show of the year? Bitch, please.”

Dan stayed up thinking until the near constant buzzing of texts, calls, and mysterious not-to-be-opened picture messages from Louise lulled him to sleep. Of the 83 texts and 58 calls he woke up to at half past noon, only one had the ability to inject a triple espresso’s worth of energy into him.

_From: Analise, Today 10:47 PM_

_hey so I just realized idk where you live?? let’s maybe meet around 7!_

As he scrambled to text back his address, yesterday’s unlikely memories and today’s fresh anxieties rolled through him in waves, cresting but never crashing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I've really enjoyed all your comments thus far! <3


	14. It All Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The night of the Snow Ball arrives.

At exactly 7:01, the doorbell rang. Dan dashed for it as quick as his freshly laundered black skinny jeans would allow. He paused before the door to smooth down his button-up and conduct one final fringe check in the dull brass of the peephole. It bulged and deadened his features, but served his purposes well enough.

He planted a winning smile on his face and opened the door. For a second, he was confused, as no one was there. The second after that, he was very confused, as his mother popped out of the nearest bush.

“ _Jesus_ fucking—Mum?”

She shushed him, and whispered, “I would be loath to lose sight of thy lady, dearest. Hast she come?”

“Not yet,” Dan grumbled. There seemed to be no change in his mum's, well, condition, but at least she was here. “Where have you been for the last thirty-six hours? Don’t you have a key?” Again, she widened her eyes and put a finger to her lips. “ _Why are we whispering?_ ”

“My loathed husband might approach.”

“Your _loathed_ —okay, alright. Do you want to come in, then? Or are you just gonna crouch there in the hydrangea bush until—” 

“Um, hi?” His date had walked halfway up the driveway without him noticing.

“Analise! You look…” She wore a strapless blue dress dotted with shimmering silver snowflakes. Her dark hair was mostly loose, but drawn back from her face in a delicate braided crown. The dim porch light brought out the glitter she’d painted around her eyes and the spindly earrings that dangled parallel to her pink-painted lips.

“Oh, she’s pure radiance, Daniel! Thy lady is light!”

“What she said.” A burst of nervous laughter escaped him. “Minus the ‘lady’ bit. You look…you look—”

“Dan, I get it—”

“—Really nice,” he finished lamely.

Analise stared down at her shoes. “Thanks.” She glanced at him, then back at her shoes. “You clean up pretty well yourself. Are those moths on your shirt?”

 “Ah, young love! So fierce in innocence, so true.”

“Don’t mind her,” said Dan. “Well, we better be off, mum. This is my mum, by the way, did I mention? Mum, Analise. Analise, mum. Okay, bye!”

“Bloody hell, Dan, did you leave the door hanging open again? Do you want _another_ raccoon in the bathroom?” Dan’s father came within sight of the gaping front door. First, he squinted. “Dan, is your date here? Your brother’s heading over with Delilah any minute, so be sure to—” His eyes widened. “ _Maggie_?” He stepped over the threshold. Basically, Dan thought, all hopes of escape were lost. “Jesus, darling, where the hell have you been?”

Dan’s mum calmly removed herself from the hydrangea bush. She looked her husband in the eye and said,  “I demand our union be dissolved at once.”

“Excuse me?”

“Your face is loathsome to me,” she said, “and all love I once had for you is gone.”

“Maggie, you—you’re not yourself. Clearly, we need to talk some things through, but for god’s sake not in front of the kids.”

“My darling!” Dan’s mum exclaimed, as if her husband had not spoken. Stocky, adored Aidan was striding up to them, hand in hand with—

“Where’s Delilah, son?”

“I scorn that girl and will keep her no longer—”

His father piped up. “Would one of you _please_ explain why you’re both talking like—”

“—it is Finley whom I do love.”

In the revolving door of his brother’s mates and girlfriends, Dan had never before seen Finley, a 5’’3’ bespectacled boy whose afro doubled the circumference of his head. Finley was looking at his brother like he held the candle that lit the sun. As for his brother, well, Finley was the recipient of a better look than any of the girlfriends ever earned.

“True love!” exclaimed Dan’s mum, tearfully throwing arms around them both.

His father spared only a passing look at this display. He lifted a limp finger, and mumbled, “You? You, and not…” He glanced at Dan, standing the length of his finger from Analise. Dan breathed his way still closer to her strawberry scent. His father fell silent.

“Alas! It spreadth wings and flies!”

“Maybe I’ve lost it,” Dan’s dad mumbled. “Just bloody lost it entirely.”  

“We better go,” said Dan, blindly groping for Analise’s wrist. “Come on, Aidan…um, Finley.”

As their party moved down the driveway, Analise called back, “It was lovely to meet you, Mr. and Mrs. Howell!”

Dan’s mum waved at her cheerfully. “By law only am I bound to this man. My true heart is wed to a gentle and beautiful woman.”

With excessive care, Dan’s father descended the three tall porch steps. He sank down upon the last and dropped his face into his palms.

“Go with joy, gentle lovers! Dance in the moonlight and be merry!”

“What’s happened?” said Dan’s dad weakly, to no one in particular. “What’s happened to this family?”

* * *

It was a clear night, barely chilly. The road they were taking was too narrow to fit four in a row, so Dan was stuck walking behind Aidan and Finley, dodging their interlocked fingers each time they swung backwards in an oh-so-whimsical fashion. Dan didn’t want to be staring at his brother making goggly eyes at some kid he hadn’t known existed an hour ago, but he couldn’t seem to rip his eyes away.

He was having trouble deciding what was most disconcerting about the thing. Maybe it was how carelessly Aidan bent down a foot and a half to whisper what could only be sweet nothings into Finley’s ear. Maybe it was that Aidan had been straighter than a freshly starched King James Bible for fifteen years. Maybe it was that love-struck was the most strange and terrifying expression he’d ever seen on his brother’s face. 

“You look like you’re gonna throw up,” said Analise. She was right next to him, they were five minutes away from his house, and Dan became suddenly aware that they hadn’t exchanged five words. In fact, he’d been walking so briskly that she was practically jogging to keep up with him. “If you do, just—away from the dress, pretty please.” She offered him a small smile, and he was mortified.

“I’m not going to—I’m totally fine.” Aidan was now near doubled over in an attempt to shower Finley with his tongue. Dan swallowed painfully. “Well,” he said, looking back toward Analise. She was in every way the more palpable sight. “Fine- _ish_.”

This seemed like a night for risks, so he said, “Talk to me. Distract me from…” He flailed an arm toward the spectacle.

“Your brother with his boyfriend?” Analise suggested, raising an eyebrow. 

“Um, yeah. Whatever it is.”

“What do you wanna talk about?”

“Literally anything.”

“Okay…what’s your favorite color?”

That fell into the boring nine-tenths of Anything, but it still qualified. “Black. Like my soul.”

“Color me unsurprised,” she laughed a little. “Mine’s green. Like trees. And broccoli.”

A moment of silence followed. Surely, Anything had more nooks and crannies than this.

“So, uh, what got you interested in theatre? From one nerd to another.”

It occurred to Dan that he’d never wondered this about Analise before. He’d accepted her presence in his cast without question, with a subtle nod of thanks to the hand of fate.

Analise tugged on her shimmery earring, maybe to check that it was still doing a-okay up in her ear.

“Um, well, I always loved it in one way or another. I used to, like, coerce my sister into putting on these little shows for our parents. Scripts and feather boas and everything.” She smiled to herself. “But I guess I was never brave enough to go for it in any real way.”

“I’m really glad you did! With _Midsummer_ , I mean. You’re a total natural.”

She grinned then, and Dan felt distinctly and warmly responsible for it.

“Thanks. That means a lot.”

“Honestly, _Midsummer_ these past few months has been one of my most rewarding experiences as a performer, and that’s at least seventy, no, eighty percent due to you and the fact that we just seem to feed off each other so well, you know, like reading a scene with you is freaking electric and—okay, fuck, I’ll stop. Shit.”

“Dan, relax, you’re fine.” She looked amused, thankfully, but not quite relaxed herself. “It’s been awesome working with you too.”

Before he could process all the complexities of her expression, Dan walked directly into his brother. Aidan and Finley had stopped on the final corner before the school’s rugby field.

“Jesus fucking—can you guys detach yourselves for, like, a minute? Please?”

Apparently, they couldn’t. Dan grimaced.

“They’re just being…affectionate,” said Analise. Was he even allowed to curse in front of her? He tried to remember when he’d ever heard her curse. 

“I'd just rather they be affectionate on a corner that isn’t directly in front of my face.”

They were distracted, not by Dan’s entreaties, but by the great canopy of a tent that had been pitched on the field. Strings of fairy lights glowed golden above the heads of the students already arriving and painted the grass in dusty sepia. From a distance, the dance seemed incredibly distant. And incredibly alluring. He wanted to grab Analise by the hand and sprint toward it.

Aidan wasted no time in following through on the compulsion that Dan was suppressing.

“Merry tidings, brother mine!” He shouted, as he and Finley rushed away.

“Before we go,” said Dan, “I should warn you in advance that there’s this friend of mine who _might_ be here and who _might_ seem like she’s into me or something, but I promise you’ve got nothing to—”

“Dan, stop.”

He did.

“What’s up?”

“I can’t do this,” said Analise. “I can’t be your date.”

She tugged at one earring, then the other. Dan fixed his eyes on the goose bumps dotting her forearms.

“Okay.”

“I’m sorry.” Analise wrapped her arms around herself. In another circumstance, if he’d been wearing a jacket, he would have offered it to her.

“I don’t know what you expect me to say.” Had he cursed too much? Acted too grossed out by his recently much gayer brother? Acted not freaked out enough by the rapid crumbling of his parents’ marriage? Did she hate his shirt?

“It’s not that you’re not a nice guy. You are. I do actually like you. If I didn’t I wouldn’t have said yes in the first place.”

“Then the problem is…?” So what if he let slip a little sass. Getting dumped 100 yards from the dance was a fair excuse for it.

 Analise squeezed her eyes shut tight. She was going to smudge her sparkly eye shadow. On the exhale of a deep breath, she said:

“I have feelings for someone else.”

“Oh.”

 “I tried to forget about them for a while. Especially since I was pretty positive the person would never like me back,” said Analise. She opened her eyes. “But something changed. Seeing your brother, your mum, I—I can’t hide from it anymore. I don’t want to.”

“Is the person you like…is he here?”

“Yeah. She is.”

 


	15. Blue Balls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dance is here, and shit goes very much down.

Chris pursed his lips and let out a lilting half-whistle. “Shit, mate. That’s brutal.”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” said Dan. He and Chris were leaning against the snack table, watching their fellow, more cheerful dancegoers and getting especially familiar with a large bowl of BBQ crisps.

“Well, as honest Abe once said in the days of yore—bitches be crazy.” He nodded solemnly. “A wise man.”

“Why am I still here.” Dan thought he’d be better off in bed, in his pants, stuffing his face with Malteasers until one snuck down the wrong pipe and he asphyxiated. “Aiden can fend for himself. I’m sure Finley’d be happy to ward off street urchins for him.”

Chris scoffed. “Like you would sacrifice the chance to see Analise with her foxy new gal pal.”

Dan speedily aborted his fifth scan of the crowd. If only Analise had given him a name, he could’ve cut his ties and run. But, no, she had to make it difficult for him. Now he was involved. 

“Plus, you’d never abandon me to my crippling loneliness. Because you love me,” said Chris. He angled his body toward the shadowy corner they were loitering near. “And since I’m such a good friend…” He shoved his hands down the front of his jeans.

“What the _hell_ are you—”

“Oh, cut the panic, I’m not showing you my penis.” From his general crotch area, Chris pulled out a mini plastic water bottle filled with clear liquid. “They were checking pockets at the entrance, but I just look like I’m packing a monster meat wand.”

“You’re a fucking godsend.”

“Yeah, yeah, grab a couple cups, already.” Chris glanced around, smiling tightly at a girl who’d come up for a can of Coke. She gave him—this guy in the corner zipping up his flies—the once over, made a face, and walked away. Chris sighed. “Jesus, Daniel, a guy can only adjust himself for so long before it becomes suspicious.” 

Dan filled two cups halfway with pinkish punch and held them out toward his friend. His returned to him a few seconds later, full and a lighter shade of pink than before. After Chris had actually readjusted himself, they clinked cups and drank.

Dan coughed. It was a weak punch, powdered lemonade at best, and a strong drink, 90 proof vodka at least. “Thanks, mate.”

Grinning, Chris said, “You think I’d actually go through Blue Balls sober?”

Dan scanned through the crowd again. An upbeat Top 20 hip-hop song was blasting from the DJ's speakers. A not-insignificant number of boys were dancing with boys. A not-insubstantial number of girls were dancing with girls. Well, as much as grinding could be called dancing. It was just that sort of song.

No one seemed to care much. Dan took another swig of his drink.

“I can’t believe she’s gay.”

Chris clucked his tongue. “Who isn’t, lately? It’s almost gotten boring.”

From the opposite side of the tent, a familiar voice managed to make itself heard over the music.

“Daniel dearest! Good morrow!”

“I take it back. It absolutely hasn’t, it’s still fantastic.”

“Oh no,” Dan groaned.

“ _God_ , yes,” said Chris, and then he called out, “Louise! Might I say you’re looking just _fetching_ this evening. Is that a new statement necklace?”

Louise, making her way across the tent at an impressively chipper pace, ignored Chris completely. The next thing Dan knew, her arms had swallowed him up.

“An age has gone since I last laid eyes on thee, my love.”

He couldn’t breathe, not only due to the closeness of the hug, but because his best friend had doused herself in enough perfume to drown a small mammal. Chris helped in no way, apart from snatching away his cup before he spilled it on her head.

“We saw each other yesterday, Louise,” he rasped.

“An _age,_ ” she repeated, tightening her grip. Maybe Chris could pour the booze directly into his mouth.

Since escape was futile, Dan patted her lightly on the back. Even that she was enjoying way, _way_ too much. Over her shoulder, Chris’s shameless grin made his knuckles itch. It’d been barely forty-eight hours since he last punched someone. He hoped the practice wasn’t habit-forming.

It took a good deal of coughing for Dan to win his release, but he got there eventually.

“Louise,” he said slowly, after a few deep breaths. She had released his entire torso and taken up his hands—a fair trade, all things considered. “Weren’t you supposed to be here with Jack? Your boyfriend, Jack.” He didn’t know why he was speaking to her like she was eight. It was something about the way her eyes were like saucers, big and glowing, on an alien spaceship about to abduct him.

Louise frowned. “Wherefore would I dally with jesters, when I have thou for a prince?”

“Not that this isn’t, well, rich,” Chris interjected, “but looks like Daddy’s coming.”

Normally, Dan got along quite well with Jack, Louise’s university-aged boyfriend of almost three years. Jack was cheerful and smart, always up for a laugh and a good conversation. Now, Dan felt himself shrink at the sight of the guy lumbering toward them. He tried to pull his hands away from Louise, but her grip was a vice.

“Jack, look—I can explain,” he said, still tugging.

“Can you? Actually?” Jack scoffed.

Louise leaned in toward Dan conspiratorially. “I hide from the snake, but still he follows.” 

“Well, you’re not exactly hard to find, Louise! You just keep running back to _him_.”

“Jack, I don’t—”

“Get thee gone, then! Haunt me no more!” Louise waggled one hand's worth of sparkly pink fingernails at the man she’d once called the love of her life. It’d been a sticky August night, late, not long after she’d slept with Jack for the first time. Dan remembered her whispering it to him over the phone, like she was terrified and exhilarated all at once. Right then, what she was describing felt so foreign to him that he could hardly believe it was within the realm of human experience.

Louise’s grip had slackened enough, what with the waving, that Dan was finally able to free himself. He shoved both hands under their opposite armpits.

More quietly, Jack said, “Whatever this is…we can work it out if you’d just talk to me. Talk to me, love—”

“Love! Thy love!” Louise spat. “If e’er I loved thee, that love is withered and dead.”

Jack’s face went blank. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “That’s how it is, then.”

“She doesn’t mean that.”

He nodded his head as if to a beat only he could hear. “All those times you and him were hanging out in his bedroom, alone, and I’m the twat thinking _good thing_ she’s got Dan in her year, he’s a decent bloke. Good thing she won’t be lonely." He dropped his head and mumbled, "Fucking idiot.”

“It’s not like that, it was _never_ like that.”

“The man doesn’t lie, Jackie Chan,” said Chris. “He came here with another girl. _Not_ your girlfriend.”

Louise gasped, dropping his hand. “What wench doth he speak of?” She smacked him on the arm.

“Oh, that’s just brilliant. Bravo,” said Jack. There were worse things than being looked at like you were literally something fuzzy growing off a toilet seat, but the feeling of it still didn’t make Dan’s top ten.

“Helpful, Chris. Thanks.”

Chris shrugged. He removed himself from the conversation with a single backwards step and continued sipping punch. How desperately Dan envied him, especially when Louise pressed her face to his chest once more.

“I do forgive thy indiscretions!” she exclaimed. He could actually feel her mouthing the words into his shirt. “Thy angel face begs a maiden’s pardon.”

“Since when do you even _like_ Shakespeare!?” Jack exploded.

“Oh no he didn’t.”

“She’s always complaining about how you can’t shut up about your stupid bloody play.”

“Jack-attack’s got a point, Daniel.”

“Okay actually who the hell are you?” Jack demanded, turning to Chris. “Why are you here?”

Chris hummed into his punch, blowing bubbles. “Would you just like the abstract, Kangaroo Jack, or shall I break out the full PowerPoint presentation?”

Dan yelped. A boy’s curly hair and wide eyes had blocked out his vision.

“You!” PJ cried. He placed his hands on Dan’s shoulders and pressed in as closely as the obstacle of Louise’s body would allow. “You, sir, art of acquaintance with my Phil, ay?”

Between the two of them, Dan’s front was growing uncomfortably warm. Maybe Chris could just splash the booze in his general direction. Some of it was bound to get in his mouth, just by the statistics of chance.

 “Um, aye?”

“Matey,” Chris added.

“Oh summer’s day! You must help me seek him.”

“Yeah, I’m done,” said Jack, who was still standing there. He lifted his palms to the lot of them. “Sonnet each other to death, for all I care.”

“Fuck, wait—Jack!” Dan tried to rush after him, prevent him from leaving somehow, but being quite literally weighed down by 140-plus kilos of human made this an impossible task. “Can everyone please just get the fuck off me!”

“But I must find—”

“I don’t know where your precious Phil is, okay? As far as I know, he’s not even supposed to be here. Happy?”

PJ’s face fell, and his brow furrowed. “Nay.”

Meanwhile, it was possible Louise had made a nest of his chest and fallen asleep. Holding out his hand, Dan glared at Chris until he got the message. He downed two-thirds of the cup while watching PJ wander away, slow and forlorn, until he was consumed entirely by the crowd.

Louise hopped suddenly, bumping her blonde head against his chin, and he nearly choked on his mouthful of punch.

“That music!” The DJ was playing a sort of cheesy, catchy pop song. “It calls me thither!” She tugged his upper arm in the direction of the dance floor. As she bounced in time with the beat, Dan thought back to every time she’d cunningly offered him an earphone and then tortured him with exactly this kind of crap. “Skip hence, my darling, swiftly!”

“Yeah, no.”

Louise pouted.

“Come on now—you can’t spare the lady one dance?”

“Chris—” Dan warned.

“What’s the harm?”

Dan supposed the harm had pretty much already been done. He threw back the last of the cup. 

“Fine.” He was starting to feel it now, just barely, the beginnings of delicious warmth in his throat and chest, softening the edges of his vision. “On two conditions. Louise—hands to yourself, please. Or at least, I dunno, keep it above the waist.” Whatever happened from here on out, no one could fault him for not making an attempt. “And you,” he grabbed Chris by one unbuttoned shirt cuff, “are coming.”

Chris blanched. “Well, you see, among the five sexual arts I’ve mastered, it just so happens that dance is _not_ —”

“Shut it,” said Dan, pulling both his friends—reluctant and eager-as-heck—toward what was likely to be their collective doom. “Shut your twat face.”  

Dan’s body was a gangling thing, not well equipped for complicated movement, so he liked to think of himself as a minimalist dancer. He swayed, bobbed his head a bit. He observed. The dance floor wasn’t hell, exactly. It was closer to a funhouse mirror, reflecting everyone he knew in jubilant distortions. A trio of male faeries had arranged themselves into a conga grind line, his brother was over by the speakers with his hands buried in Finley’s afro, and his best friend kept flouting the “no touching” rule. Chris was, well—

“What?” He shrugged, and shouted, “Peer pressure!” before continuing to rock his hips slightly out of time with the very male person who’d snuck up behind him. Dan thought he recognized the dude from maths; this was the most awake Dan had ever seen him.

“I do entreat your pardon, my sweet,” Louise said, the second time Dan had to remove her hands from his bum. “It’s so very…” In midair, she mimed squeezing something—perhaps a pair of melons—and giggled.

A teacher tried to break up a set of boys who’d fallen to the floor, lost in a passion perhaps not suited for public consumption. But Mr. Linden intervened.

“True love!” He proclaimed, more than once, like someone else might’ve called out _The Holy Word of Jesus_. His toupee bounced in indignation.

At some point a slow song switched on, the kind of sappy Ed Sheeran shit that made every couple within a 2-meter radius stare tearfully into each other’s eyes. It usually meant that a water break and some dry retching were nigh. The crowd was already thinning out a bit, and Dan was about to suggest at least the former his gaze fell upon Analise and Carrie.

“Are you seeing this?”

“Yeah,” he said.

For a moment, all he could think to see was the two of them. The arrangement of their bodies was middle school classic—arms around neck, hands cupping waist. Boring, practically. What interested Dan were the faces. They were utterly rapt on one another, as if the tent could collapse and the fairy lights could set it alight and everything would still be fine. It’d be perfect. Arms on neck, hands on waist, eyes on eyes.

“I can’t be here.”

“Why you gotta be like that, babe?” A voice from somewhere not far behind Dan made him freeze.

“Oh fuck me,” said Dan, ducking his head as best he could. He was once again furious at his improbable tallness. “If that shithead comes over here, I _will_ punch him again.”

Chris looked affronted. “What happened to ‘walked into a locker’?”

If Dan’s own subconscious hadn’t granted him full access to that story, no one else would be getting it either.

“Seemed more likely,” he shrugged.

“Babe,” said Vince again. The girl he kept trying to dance on was not having it. “Baby, you know last week I done you good on my gran’s sofa.” She pulled her partner closer by the hem of her miniskirt. “Want her to join in, then? I mean, she’s fit. Not as hot as you, baby, but I wouldn’t say no.” She elbowed him in the solar plexus. “Bitch.”

Chris smirked. “Our buddy Vince is a fallen man.”

To distract from the girl, Vince spotted a betrayal of epic proportions.

“Kieran, the fuck you—Oliver?” He gaped for a moment, like a catfish. Then, he broadened his sight’s scope, taking in the relaxed pandemonium that encircled him. “What is this, some fucking prank?” He sounded furious. “What’re you messing me around for?” He sounded scared. “You think this is funny, gaylord?”

It took Dan a second to realize that he was the gaylord in reference. He’d forgotten to duck.

“Thought I’d shown you yesterday you’re not tough shite.”

“Oh fuck off, Vince.” Dan felt a thrill go through him, amplified by the alcohol currently easing into his bloodstream.

“Are you off your bloody rocker?” Chris hissed

“Say it again, motherfucker.”

Against all strains of reason he’d ever been infected with, Dan laughed. “Nobody cares, Vince. So fuck off.”

As Vince began charging his way through the crowd, Chris rested a consoling hand on Dan’s shoulder.

“Well, you’re dead.”

“I’m not afraid of him.” 

“You know, your tragic death might actually help ticket sales—silver linings.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“I shall slay him before he layeth a hand on thee.”

“No thank you, Louise.”

Vince was coming at Dan fist first. The twinging in his face had numbed a bit since the tipsiness, but it hunkered down again at the anticipation of another blow. If he was feeling sensible, he could duck. He could run, or call over a teacher. But Dan wasn’t feeling especially sensible tonight.

“Stop.” It was the most powerful imperative Dan had heard in a long time. It came from someone with the inexplicable power to make him—his words, his thoughts, his breath—stop.

“Just quit it, both of you. Please.”

“Phil,” said Dan, less asking, more affirming. Phil was here. He was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt under a red bomber jacket—too casual for the dance, and likely too warm. He was here, between the two of them, and none of it made sense, but it kind of fit. In Dan’s experience, Phil never made much sense.   

Vince had burst into laughter.

“Right, yeah, Lester,” he laughed, “you the knight or the princess this time? Do you two switch off? Got a schedule somewhere?” He rolled back his shoulders and cracked his neck like he was enjoying himself. “Maybe I’ll test which of you’s first to cry.”

“That won’t be happening,” said Phil.

“Oh yeah, what’re you gonna do—fly away?” Vince smirked. “Didn’t come off too good for you last time.”

Dan fought himself not to intervene. Phil’s unusual calm bid him forbearance.

“I don’t hate you, Vince,” he said, after a pause.

“Don’t give two shits about you, Lester.”

“Maybe I should,” Phil went on, thoughtfully, as if there had been no interruption, “But I don’t really hate people. When you think about it, hating takes up loads of time and energy. I wouldn’t want to waste all that on someone like you.”

From the inner pocket of her jacket, he pulled out that purple flower. Like he was drawing a gun.

“What’re gonna do with a fucking pansy? Decorate me? Christ, you’re a bigger faggot than I thought.”

The word made Dan flinch, but it was less powerful stripped of its anonymity. Vince, its speaker, was alone.

“There’s something you don’t know about me.” The flower was no worse the wear for being crushed to Phil’s chest. Its petals were all intact, fresh, glowing in the fairy light. He held it out before him, aiming to shoot.

“I can make you fall in love,” said Phil, with the smallest of smiles.

Something in Vince’s brain must’ve clicked, because he gestured around them and said, “Is all this on you, then? Is this some kind of sick fucking revenge? The fuck do you think you’re—”

Fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is basically the climax of the fic, so please do let me know what you think! :D


	16. Cupid's Archery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The boys talk a few things out.

Vince cut off with a garbled shout. He rubbed furiously at his eyes. “You fucking freak—I’ll kill you! I’ll bash your fucking head in!”

Phil took one calm sidelong step to the right. Dan mirrored him instinctually. The instant Vince opened his eyes, the stream of violent cursing dried up. Silence fell upon them. And then:

“You must be kidding.” 

Phil followed the line of Vince’s gaze. He winced. “Sorry! I didn’t, um, actually see you there.”

Vince broke his quiet and all but bellowed, “I am blown away with love for thee, Kent!”

“Him?” said Chris incredulously, “Of literally anyone else in the world, this arsehole?”

“Embrace me, dear Kent, so that I might feel joy!”

Vince was barreling toward him with his arms outstretched. “Oh no you don’t!” Chris greeted him with crossed pointer fingers held out before him, as if warding off the devil. “And it’s Chris, you lukewarm shit!”

Vince grabbed Chris’s devil fingers like a blessing. He kissed them deeply.

“Should we help him?” asked Phil. They watched as Chris leapt backward in disgust and bolted toward the snack table, Vince in close pursuit.

“He can handle himself,” said Dan. Cackling, Chris upended the plastic crisps bowl and placed it on his head. “Mostly.”

“Try to kiss me now, dickface!” The bowl was opaque, so Dan guessed he couldn’t see a thing, but he compensated by batting his hands wildly in every direction.

“Let me cherish thee!” On a lucky shot, Chris smacked him across the face. On a less lucky note, Vince kind of seemed to be into that.

“This is the most confused I’ve ever been,” said Dan. “I still haven’t ruled out hallucinogens. Or really weird space aliens.”

“How about magic?”

Dan looked over at Phil. His face was unreadable.

“Do you wanna get out of here, maybe? Just someplace quieter to talk. I mean, I understand if you’d rather—”

“Okay,” said Dan. “But I think the real question is ‘can I?’” He was referencing his stage-5 clinger, who he had already begun to visualize as a new appendage—vestigial but permanent. “Can I get out of here? Can I _really_?”

“Phil? _PHIL?_ ”

Phil’s eyes widened. He promptly doubled over 

 “Oh despair! Where art thou, my prince? PHIL!?”

At the level of Dan’s stomach, Phil said, “Wait! I’ve got an plan.”

As an indignant Louise rushed away in pursuit of PJ, convinced he was out to steal her man, Phil looked apologetic.

“I never said it was a good plan.”

* * *

Dan and Phil made their exit too quickly to know where to go. They loitered for a few moments just outside the glowing frame of the tent, where it was darker and cooler and quieter. Adjacent to the field, the blocky bleak silhouette of the school building drew Dan’s eye.

“I’d suggest the bleachers, but something tells me they’re already _ocupado_ ,” he said, shivering a little. He envied Phil his jacket, the way it loosely hugged his broad shoulders—he doubted he could pull off something similar, at least not that well. None of his own jackets had been cool enough to preserve the integrity of his outfit. He unrolled his sleeves to his wrists and crossed his arms.

“I’d invite you to mine again,” said Phil, “But your mum stayed over last night and, uh, the walls are pretty thin so—”

“ _Don’t_ want to hear it.”

“Neither did I!” Phil exclaimed. Dan broke into giggles, then, tipsy enough to find hilarity in this entire improbable night. It was his habit to opt for laughing over crying. Phil cracked a tentative smile back, and then said, “We could always just walk. It’s not too cold.”

“Speak for yourself.” If he asked very nicely, maybe Phil would lend him his jacket. On second thought, “How much you wanna bet they left a door open?”

* * *

Like any theatre kid, Dan had spent plenty of time at school after hours. He was used to the long nights of tech week and dress rehearsal, all too familiar with peals of his cast mates’ laughter echoing through eerily empty corridors. But every time before had been carefully scheduled and chaperoned, micromanaged until the big iron doors clicked shut behind the last student and the school finally got some sleep.

This outing was different. A back door cracked open when Dan pushed at it and immediately it felt different to be here, illicitly, with Phil.

“If I get kicked out six months from graduation, it’ll be a hundred and ten percent your fault,” said Phil, his voice hushed as they peered around the hallway’s first corner, “Just for the record.”

But it seemed they really were alone.

“Please, everyone’s too distracted by the pandemonium to care about a little breaking and entering. Not that there was even any breaking… just entering.”

“Have you been drinking?” Phil asked. Out of nowhere, Dan thought, before he realized he’d been grinning goofily since ‘entering.’

“I am _perhaps_ a two point five on the drunk scale.” He wasn’t lying, much. He could count on fewer than ten fingers how many times he’d consumed enough alcohol to feel something. All of them had happened since befriending Chris. Dan wondered how many more times it would take before he was less of a fucking lightweight.

“Okay, so this was definitely a bad idea, then.”

“It’s not!” Dan swayed into Phil as they walked, bumping shoulders. “I swear it’s not—look, I’m totally coherent and nothing’s spinning and I can’t walk in a straight line normally so that means nothing,” said Dan, and when Phil looked unconvinced, he added, “You’re the one who wanted to talk, so let’s talk, right?” 

Phil sighed. “Your face looks worse today.”

The last time Dan had looked in a mirror, the bruise had been starting to green around its edges. Had he not been trying his hardest to avoid Louise, he would’ve swallowed the unappetizing remains of his pride and asked to borrow some concealer.

“Thanks.”  

“Accident, huh?”

“More or less.” It might as well have been, with how little control he’d had over his fist flying in the direction of Vince’s face.

Phil hummed vaguely in response. “Dan, look… I overheard you and Vince talking, before. I know you got into a fight with him.”

It’d been a shitty secret to begin with. Dan preferred secrets that he had a good, very clear reason for keeping.

“I don’t know if you could call it a fight, really, since he doesn’t have a scratch on him. Unless there was some internal bleeding I missed.”

Not to be diverted, Phil said, “But you hit him first.”

Dan wasn’t sure why that mattered. The whole incident had been cause and effect, pretty much scientific inevitability—any other details were subsidiary. It mattered to Phil, though, and the prospect of more dishonesty was like a needle to the helium balloon of Dan’s energy.

“Yeah,” he said, “I did.” But he still failed to meet the other boy’s eye. He knew all too well Phil was searching for an explanation he couldn’t give. 

Finally, to his great relief, Phil nodded. “His nose did look a little redder than usual.”

“Rudolph the red-nosed arsehole.”

Phil laughed, and Dan’s topsy-turvy world righted just a bit on its axis. As he glanced around, the darkened corridors became a lot less indiscriminate. He knew exactly where they were headed, where it seemed preordained that they would end up.

“This is the darkest dark there has ever been,” said Phil. The auditorium doors had swung shut behind them, closing them into the windowless space.

They made their way down the center aisle, guided by cell phone light and trailing their hands along the backs of the seats they passed.

“Wanna go back?” Phil asked, when Dan gasped at the shadow of his swinging arm.

“We’re both verifiable giants—what’s there to be scared of?” He frowned as they circled around the side of the stage. “Just don’t say the ‘M’ word.”

After a pause, Phil asked, “Marijuana?”

Dan snorted. “Jesus fucking… no, Phil. I meant the Scottish—actually, you know what, never mind.” He took the first step with Phil close behind him. Too close, in fact, considering that Phil trod on the hem on his trousers.

“Fuck! Shit—okay, ow.”

He’d tipped backwards, but Phil had grabbed him hard by the waist and the hand. Even though he didn’t fall, his hand was still feeling the effects of yesterday. He jerked away as if from a hot stove.

“Sorry.”

They made it up the remaining steps and onto the stage without incident. Dan let his phone go blank as they stood for a second beneath the blacked out lights.

“You know, I actually dislocated my thumb,” Dan said, after they had sat cross-legged beneath the set’s paper-mache tree. He couldn’t let Phil think that he would pull away so tactlessly. “The nurse had to pop it back in the socket afterwards.”

“Oh god, really?”

Phil was looking way more concerned than he had counted on, but—never one to abandon the structural integrity of his anecdotes—he stuck to his ground. “She kept frowning disapprovingly at me. I swear to god I’ve never felt more badass in my life. All I needed was a leather jacket and a coif gelled back with industrial-grade petroleum.” 

A pause, absent of laughter. 

“I’m just glad you’re okay.”

Dan glanced over at Phil, down at his shoes, back at Phil. He eventually settled for center stage, practically the void in this little light.

“Is your mum gonna be able to fix them, you think? You know, in time for the play.”

If the play even happens, Dan thought but didn’t say, and if your mum snaps out of her sudden, all-consuming love for my mum.

Phil’s brow furrowed. “What do you—“ It smoothed in quick understanding. His cheeks had gone pink. “I didn’t realize you saw that.”

“I mean, yeah.” Now Dan was the one confused. His blood simmered again at the thought of the wings, splayed out so sacrilegiously against lockers identical to the ones they’d been strolling past. “Why the fuck else would I go after Vince? I’m not _that_ self-destructive.”

“But it had nothing to do with—why would you…” Air huffed out from his nose. “You really didn’t have to do that.”

If Phil and anger had seemed fundamentally incompatible, that illusion was now shattered.

“Like, okay, that was nice of you and everything, and I hate that you got hurt over it, but I don’t need your pity.”

“I—”

“I don’t know if you were feeling guilty or whatever but I can handle my own shit, Dan,” He scrubbed the heel of his hand across his forehead. “I’ve been doing it long enough.”

If Dan hadn’t felt guilty before, he certainly did now. “Christ, Phil, I know. I didn’t mean—”

“Do you, though? What do you even know about me? Besides the fact that I can’t act and I’m gay.” He was bitter, and Dan hadn’t spotted it. He hadn’t even bothered to look, and that scrapped at him like a serrated blade. “Like me, don’t like me—believe it or not, I’ll survive. But please don’t ever act like _gay_ is the only thing that matters about me.”

Phil was fiddling with his phone, glancing back the way they’d come. If he stormed out now there would be no answers—not to the flower, not to the chaos, not to anything.

“I-I’m sorry I bailed on you, after you told me, and then, like, basically ignored you,” Dan said, “That was a dick move." 

Phil raised his eyebrows, but he was stiller. “Maybe a bit, yeah.”

“I freaked out.” He really wished he’d rehearsed for this, or at least brought along some cheat cards. “Because honestly I’d never met someone gay, or at least, you know, out of the closet, in person before and there you were all out and fine with it and _happy_ when I literally transferred schools to get away from idiots like Vince kicking my ass and calling me a faggot. God, I fucking hate that word. Like, whenever I get anywhere near it something in my head just snaps and I run. I always fucking run and usually feel absolute _shit_ for it afterwards, but when I saw what Vince did…”

Yet again the end of that sentence failed to materialize. He was really hoping it would speak for itself, somehow dissipate the static harshness between them.

“It was my mum’s wedding dress,” said Phil, quietly. Dan was so thankful for the slight softening of his expression that he barely registered the new information. “She took it out from the back of the closet and cut it all up and sewed the pieces back together into _that._ I didn’t ask her to or anything—it was just her way of moving on, I guess.”

“Your dad?” Dan prompted, barely audible, afraid he would break the spell.

“Sometimes I tell people he’s dead.” He laughed once. “It’s not like he’ll be around anytime soon, since he can’t stand my face.”

Every argument with his parents over drama club, every interrogation about potential girlfriends, every unflattering comparison to his brother, seemed all at once pathetic and trivial.

“I’m sorry,” he said. There was nothing else to say except, “Your dad’s a fucking dick.”

Phil neither confirmed nor denied; he also didn’t charge at Dan in a rage, so that was a good sign. “I’m not telling you so you’ll feel bad for me.”

“Good thing I don’t, then.” In the blizzard of his feelings toward Phil, a blinding sensory overload, nothing could be called pity. 

Phil cracked a smile. “I’m telling you ‘cause, well, I know you’ve been wondering about _this_ ,” he said, worrying a petal of the purple flower between his fingertips.

“Maybe a bit, yeah,” said Dan. His curiosity was insatiable at the best of times, so he actually couldn’t resist. “How’re you doing it? Is there some sort of drug being pumped through the stem? Or are you, like, _speed_ hypnotizing people?”

“Weirder than that. Way too mad to keep to myself.”

“Is it…?” Dan threw up his hands. “I dunno, fucking method acting?”

The look in Phil’s eyes could kill a thousand conspiracy theories.

“Would you believe me,” he whispered, “if I said it was magic?”

Dan’s thoughts rolled to a halt. He couldn’t believe that—his values, his intellect, his pride would never allow it.

“Not even for a minute.”

Phil looked down at the flower between his laced fingers. “I know it’s crazy.”

“It’s bloody Shakespearean, Phil. Look, I’m not saying you’re lying, I’m really not, but there must be some other explanation.”

“Even if there is, though!” He exclaimed, hope sparking in his eyes. “Even if there is, would we really want it?”

Dan wanted that hope to electrify his doubt, the skepticism he’d carefully cultivated for so long.

“It’s a better world, you know?”

Dan thought about that. He thought of freedom, and no one giving a shit who you danced with. He thought of Jack and his father and the people they loved.

“Maybe not for everyone.”

Phil bit his lip. “I know there were a few mix-ups, but I’ll sort those, I promise. It’s not like it’ll be forever.” Half-heartedly, he twirled the flower between his first two fingers.

“So, there really aren’t any secret tubes in that thing? You’re positive?”

“It’s real, Dan. See, here—” Phil held it out to him, gripping the stem in one hand and cupping his other hand over the petals. Dan flinched backwards, as if Phil had presented him with a dagger. Exasperated, Phil said, “It’s not a snake,” and grabbed Dan’s hand.

In the couple seconds it took Dan to process the contact, it had gone and he was touching the purple flower.

“See,” Phil smirked, proudly. “This baby’s made up of one hundred percent, _au natural_ plant bits." 

Dan’s fingertips were on the waxy, kind of fuzzy stem. It certainly felt real. He slipped his nail beneath a curvy thorn. The thorn peeled off, “shit,” and he caught it in his palm. It lolled around, leaving sticky residue. “ _Flower of this purple dye, hit with Cupid’s archery…_ ”  

“ _Sink in apple of his eye, when his love he doth espy_...something like that, yeah.” Satisfied, Phil pulled the flower back. He returned it to his jacket’s inner pocket.

“The dance might be winding down,” said Dan, with a yawn. The alcohol had seeped out of his system too slowly for him to pinpoint the moment of a final exit. Everything left over was exhaustion. “Maybe we should head back?” It’d be better if they did. He was sleepy enough to start saying stupid things, or maybe to start believing in magic.

“Yeah, sure.” Phil nodded, and smirked. “Before someone remembers the doors and we get trapped here forever.”

The thought wasn’t awful, falling asleep beneath the papier-mâché tree with Phil. He’d be out cold in a second, so that no monsters of the imagination—folded into the curtains or skulking in the shadows beneath the floodlights—could touch them. 

Dan rubbed at his eyes. He listened to the creaking of the stage’s wooden floorboards, that unmistakable sound of Phil rising to his feet. When he opened his eyes, Phil’s outstretched hand was the first thing he saw. He let himself be helped, offering Phil his good hand: half peace offering, half possibility.

“My phone’s nearly dead, so if it gets really dark all of a sudden, I promise it’s not because I’m about to zombify you.”

Finally, he locked eyes with Phil.

Dan didn’t respond, because a single, conquering thought had colonized every town and city and continent in his mind.

Phil Lester was beautiful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for how long it's taken me to post this (school started up again and ahh)! I'm quite proud of this chapter, so let me know what you think! Only a couple left now...


	17. With You Dreaming

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dan is caught under Phil's spell.

Dan’s world had narrowed itself down to one gloriously shining point. Nothing had ever been clearer, less complicated. It was truth he’d never allowed himself to acknowledge.

Phil Lester was beautiful, and there was only one thing Dan could do about that. Only one thing made sense. 

“Hey, what’re you—”

But he could say no more, because Dan was kissing him. Phil took one moment to go stiff with shock. At the very next he was kissing back with what seemed like every ounce of his stored-up enthusiasm.

“ _Dan_ ,” he said between meetings of lips, more like a plea than anything. “What are you doing?” Hands hidden in black hair like satin. A sharp intake of breath— _music_. “What are _we_ doing?” Lips again—soft and warm and deeper this time. Phil was opening himself up to him.

Then, his hands were on Dan’s shoulders. “Dan, wait.” He held him gently but still away. “We should really talk about this.”

Away wouldn’t do at all, so Dan plucked up one of those pale, lovely hands and brought his mouth to it. He dragged his bottom lip across the skin there that his eyes couldn’t see in the dark, even from so close a distance.

“Or later,” Phil said. “Later is good.”

His hands fluttered from shoulders to neck, from holding away to pulling closer. They were kissing again.

Dan murmured into the soft hollow behind Phil’s ear. “ _My love._ ” He’d never spoken words that so violently shook the four chambers of his heart. But Phil stiffened beneath his caressing hands.

“Dan. Dan, look at me.”

He could let the sun’s rays luxuriate or be guided by moonlight, but never both at once. This was a difficult choice to process.

“Right now, look at me. Dan—please.”

It was ultimately no choice at all. He would obey, because the alternative risked sacrificing sun and moon both.

“Say it again, Dan. What you just said.”

His voice bled urgency. Dan was happy to reassure.

“I love you,” he smiled.

Everywhere, Phil’s touch dropped from him.

“Fuck.” He took a step back—away again. Dan was frustrated; surely they were finished with that.

“Fuck,” said Phil again, more quietly, like a secret. He touched his reddened lips with his first two fingertips. “I’ve never kissed a boy before.”

“I am happily thy first, as thou art mine.” Every centimeter of the space between them was like a paper cut. He eased forward, what little closeness Phil would allow him, to sooth the sting. “I would grant thee a thousand firsts and only’s.” He was almost close enough to taste Phil’s breath. Needing this, he said, “Prithee, love—give me my first again.”

Phil ducked his chin out of reach. “Dan, I can’t.”

This was quite distressing indeed. Nothing had changed but that Dan had voiced the truth.

“I’m sorry,” Phil went on. “I really can’t. Please don’t be upset.”

“I adore thee,” said Dan, after a moment’s consideration. He wasn’t upset, not really, because to be in Phil’s presence was enough to satiate his ravenous love. “So my desires art thine. Only let me be close to thee, and I shall be more fortunate than any prince.”

Phil’s brow furrowed.

“Lie with me.” Dan fell to his knees on the cool stage floor. “That and no more. Here, beneath the willow. We shall gaze toward the false sky and imagine stars and be as dreamers together." 

Phil looked toward the ceiling, biting his lip, and then glanced down.

“I guess that’d be alright. For a little while.”

* * *

 

Dan trod so lightly from waking to dreaming and back again that he couldn’t tell one state of mind from the next. Over and over, he drifted off with his head on Phil’s chest. Over and over, he blinked open his eyes to check that Phil was beside him still. Each time, he looked up at the spray-painted canopy above their heads, searched for movement in the plastic leaves, and concluded that this was the perfect place. He said not a word to Phil, who was also dozing. Or Dan assumed as much, taking stock of Phil’s closed eyes and flushed lips and the warm weight of Phil’s hand between his shoulder blades. Dan watched his brow wrinkle and wanted nothing more than to smooth it peaceful again with hands or words or lips. Even if Dan risked waking him, he couldn’t resist the chance to slip into Phil’s dreams.

“Phil,” someone said. Not him. A dream person maybe. “Have we had our fun yet?”

“I’ll fix it,” he said, just as Dan was slipping under again. “In the morning, I’ll fix it.”

He was called awake by Phil’s thumb brushing his cheek.

“Dan…Dan, I think I hear someone. We have to—”

From across the theatre, the doors cracked open. Familiar giggling echoed.

“Hey, wait, wait, _shh_ ,” someone hissed, and then louder, “Hello? Is anyone there?”

“I told thee, sweet! ‘Tis the spirits’ domain.”

To Dan’s dismay, Phil clamored to his feet. “Not a ghost, I promise! But yeah, hey.”

“Phil? What’re you—wait, is someone up there with you?”

Dan had been lying on the ground, arms stretched skyward and playing with the fingers of Phil’s right hand, so fixated he hardly noticed the theatre’s new occupants. Now, Phil squashed his fascinated fingers in a fist and tugged.

“Come on, Dan. Say hi.”

Once on his feet, Dan spared a glance at them—Analise alive with grinning, Carrie’s bright eyes fixed on her face, their hands linked—and he felt nothing. He remembered yesterday, even earlier this night, as though he’d read about it years before. Her presence was beyond irrelevant. What feelings he ever had for her were trite and ill conceived and most importantly _past_. They were so much an ornament of the past that had someone told him he’d spent the last sixteen years asleep, he would not have argued.

But it occurred to him suddenly that Phil might be terribly mistaken that she was still any threat. Perhaps, for Phil, yesterday had not gone so stale.

He took Phil’s face in his hands. “The maiden is gone to me—vanished in thy light. Evermore I shall gaze on her with scorn alone.”

“Dan—what?” Analise’s bemusement barely registered, as Phil was trying to duck away. “I mean, again, I’m really sorry, but I still like you loads as a person and I don’t want to lose you as a—”

“Lo, a rival!” Carrie cried, clutching Analise’s hand to her own cheek. “My sweet, I swear his love for thee is not half mine.”

“Ay, as I love her naught!” Dan shouted, not back at Carrie but directly into Phil’s face, so he would be sure to understand.

“Even were his passion a star, mine covereth the heavens whole.”

“My _passion_ , if e’er it lived, ‘twas but a rock—dull, ignorant, and foul. As is thy lady.”

Carrie gasped. “Do you bite your thumb at me, sir!”  

Before Dan could retaliate, Phil’s hand was covering his mouth. “I think you’ve said quite enough,” he said. “And don’t you dare lick me.” Plan foiled, Dan pouted and contented himself with inhaling the scent of Phil’s skin.

“What is this … what’s going on?” Analise looked from Carrie, who was stroking her own face with the other girl’s palm, to Dan, who’d started humming Puck’s monologue, and back again.

“Look, Analise. I can explain.”

“It’s not real, is it.”

Phil’s hand slipped away, but Dan stayed silent, resting his head on his shoulder. “I don’t know what you’re—”

“The dance, Linden, Vince…Carrie…” The girl in question perked up, but Analise wasn’t looking at her. “None of it’s real.”

“Depends how you look at it,” Phil said.

Analise laughed softly. She plucked her hand out of Carrie’s grasp and looked down at it. “I can’t believe I’m such an idiot.”

“No! No, you’re not, please don’t say that,” said Phil, breathless. “Hey, you’re happy, right? Or you were a few seconds ago — sorry. And, and she’s happy too! Making people happier, giving everyone someone to love…that can’t be so horrible, right?”

A long moment passed. Dan entertained himself by watching Phil breathe.

Then, in a quiet voice, Analise said, “If it’s not real, I don’t want it.”

“It’s, it’s really not all that bad. You can—”

“I want _her,_ Phil.” She swerved to avoid Carrie’s lips on her cheek. “Not some renaissance faire version of her magicked to want me back!” She batted Carrie’s hand from her hair. “Not this, this clingy automaton consolation prize! I want her to _choose_ me, don’t you get that?” Carrie moved to embrace her, and Analise shoved her away. “Can you please not touch me for a second!” Carrie stumbled in her sparkly high heels, barely recovering. Analise looked stricken. “Shit, Carrie, are you alright—I didn’t mean to…I didn’t want to…god, I really can’t do this.” To no one in particular, she gave a small nod. “I’m gonna go.”

Phil sighed. “You don’t have to—” 

“Yeah, I think I do actually.” Briefly, Dan met her eye before setting his sights on something far more fascinating: Phil’s jawline. He was almost too preoccupied to hear her say, “God, Phil, how can you stand it?”

The last things Dan remembered before falling asleep were lips pressed against his forehead, wetness near his eyes, and being in love.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whelp it's been a while hasn't it? I won't offer excuses, but I will say I have finally finished this story and you can expect the last two chapters within the next couple days!


	18. And We All Wake Up

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The morning after.

“Dan! Dan, honey, daylight’s a’wasting!”

Blearily, he blinked up at his ceiling, flashes of the maddest dream streaming through his head in technicolor and surround sound. He felt like he’d been jump-kicked in the face and left unconscious for years. Chris must’ve spiked that vodka with something, or else it was about a thousand proof and hallucinogenic.

“You’ve gotta get up sometime!" His mother called. "Sooner rather than later, thanks — you’re giving me a bloody migraine!”

He could relate. Her pounding on the bedroom door was only exacerbating the literal beating of his head. Meanwhile, his phone was on his bedside table trying its best to get noticed. It buzzed determinately and blasted a jingle from Final Fantasy on repeat.

“Dan! I’m really trying to respect your privacy here, but I’m about two seconds away from barging in there with a hammer.”

“I’m up! I’m up!” He shouted back hoarsely. “Jesus…” With some minor scrambling, he finally shut it up.

“Oh sweet silence. There’s sandwiches and tomato soup left over from your brother, if you leave the attitude upstairs.”

As if on cue, his stomach grumbled audibly. The last thing he’d eaten was half the snack table after being dumped by his date, a fact his mum would surely be delighted by.

“Yeah, alright, give me a minute!”

It was past two on Saturday afternoon, and his screen was blocked out by texts and missed calls. His vision blurred out the specifics, still too disoriented to deal with anything real. Plopping the phone facedown on the sheets, he burrowed his head in the pillow once more. What little peace this was didn’t last long.

“ _What_ ,” he hissed in his phone, after its third consecutive round of buzzing.

“Don’t give me that sack of shit,” said Chris pleasantly. “Where have you been—dead? Doesn’t matter. Point is emergency rehearsal started half an hour ago and you need to move your arse.”

“Emergency…what?”

“I know, I know. You’re hungover. Everyone drunk the Kool-Aid and everyone’s hung the fuck over, mate. But the show must go on.”

Dan spent the next ten minutes in hyperdrive, speed dressing and speed hair straightening and speed tooth brushing, fueled by a steady stream of foul language. His phone hadn’t buzzed again, so he went food hunting. His parents were the unfortunate witnesses, sat at the kitchen table with their heads together over the weekend crossword.

“When I told you to get going, I didn’t mean run,” said his mum, as he stuffed a sandwich in his face and groaned with hardly any exaggeration. “Though the enthusiasm is refreshing.”

Chewing, he explained, “Didn’t check—rehearsal—forgot!”

His father frowned. “Today? Gosh, they really don’t let you kids recover, do they?”

“Aiden’s not said much about your adventures last night, but he’s been entertaining Delilah since lunch—door open, of course—so I imagine things went smoothly.” Stalling on the last letter of two-across, his mother gave him a second’s opening before she added, “Analise is a lovely girl.”

Dan swallowed too quickly, downright painfully. The sandwich was gone and now his chest hurt.

“She really is,” he said, “but we’re better off as friends I reckon.” If words had weight, these were ten-ton behemoths. When they left him, he felt improbably lighter, which felt proof enough that they were true.

But his mother put down her pencil.

“You see, we—”

“It’s the way of the world, I’m afraid,” she said. Vaguely pleasant, consoling. Not angry, not apprehensive or betrayed. “But there’s someone new around every corner, isn’t there?” She seemed to remember something, cheeks going slightly pink. "Perhaps someone you might not expect." She shook her head and knocked her knuckles once against her husband’s.

“Quite right, dear,” he said, barely looking up from his careful kettle pouring.

Right this moment, in his school auditorium, there was someone at rehearsal that Dan very much needed to see again. He shoved on his shoes.

“Don’t be too late, or those cut-throat theatre folk will bring in the understudy,” his father went on, still smiling as he stirred into his tea the usual three packets of artificial sweetener. “And we were looking forward to seeing this one, weren’t we?”

Dan met his mother’s eyes as she nodded. “I’ll be very cross if you don’t get us tickets in advance this time.” She placed her hand on top of her husband’s and laced their fingers together. “And I won’t have any of that nosebleed section bollocks, either, what with your father nearsighted as a bat.”

Her smile was an effort, but an honest one, so Dan promised only the worthiest of seats and sprinted three whole streets before he needed to breathe again.

* * *

He wasn’t sure what he expected when he arrived at rehearsal. Best-case scenario: the entire cast would turn to him at once, cheering as he mounted the stage steps with his theme song blaring in the background. Worst-case: a full-scale hanging, drawing, and quartering. When he pushed through the auditorium’s heavy double doors, the cast was assembled in a circle, heads down and hands linked. The stage floor and all the seats were damp and sticky.

“It’s not what it looks like,” said Chris, smirking as Dan joined. “The alarm went off and, well —”

“Everyone got drenched,” said Carrie, on his other side.

“No one found any fire,” said Analise, halfway across the circle.

“What’d they put it out with? Perfume?” Dan muttered, more occupied with a scan of his cast mates’ faces.

Chris's eyes were lined with exhaustion, his mouth lined with contentment. Carrie's curls were a little deflated, last night’s makeup dried in an ill-placed paste. She tossed anxious glances at Analise, who looked only down, her hair hanging in limp, newly washed curtains.

“Doesn’t matter,” said Dan, his tour concluded. “Where’s—”

“How marvelous to see our circle completed.” Ms. Alexis sat cross-legged at its center, half hidden under the deep violet folds of her skirt. She smiled. “Almost.”

Dan could feel apologies bubbling in his throat, rising level with a dozen questions ( _where is he_ ), but before he could spit anything up she raised a delicate hand. “I’m afraid you’ve missed our energy-melding session. But you’re just in time for some shop-keeping. Sit down, please, Dan. Everyone, sit.”

As they obeyed, Ms. Alexis rose gracefully to her feet, revealing neither knee nor ankle beneath the great skirt. She gazed down at them for a moment, clasped her hands together, and said, “ _A Midsummer’s Night Dream_ will premiere two weeks from today.”

A strange relief, reviving and overwhelming, beat upon Dan like the midday sun. As far as he knew, the play had never been under any threat. “The concerns of principal Windsor and certain affiliates of the school sports program—” She cleared her throat. “Have come to a peace. As a matter of fact, one of our more vocal critics called just this morning.”

In Dan’s periphery, Chris raised an eyebrow. But his attention was fixed elsewhere ( _where is he_ ).

“This critic has pre-ordered an entire row of tickets for the football team, with the encouragement of several of his top players,” said Ms. Alexis, with the air more of a satisfied spectator than a victor. “So, as they say, the show can and _will_ go on.” A few whoops from the cast, none from Dan’s friends. Ms. Alexis clapped her hands and a few people jumped, Dan’s friends and Dan himself. It all felt so fragile still. “Full run-through in ten!”

“Um—” He exclaimed without a thought in advance ( _where is he_ ). People were already rising to their feet, chattering with more ease by the instant. “What about—”

His phone buzzed. He forgot the question and tugged it out of his pocket at once; disappointment and shame chased each other across his features. The shame tackled the disappointment, allowing his vision to focus long enough to read Louise’s text.

From: Louise, Today 3:41 PM

So last night was a time?? I think? Ahaaa Jack’s royally pissed off at me and I cld use my best friend tbh

A smile tugged at the corners of his lips. They would gorge themselves on pizza, they would lounge on his bed in six different wrong directions while talking shit, they would — but first ( _where is he_ ). Someone tapped on his shoulder, so light it could’ve been a butterfly landing and taking off again.

“He never flew far,” whispered Ms. Alexis, the bright eye in a storm of her own making. “Why, I believe he’d like someone to catch up.”

* * *

Dan found him in the middle of the football field. He was barefoot in last night’s rumbled clothes, hardly formal anymore. He hugged his knees and stared out at the expanse of neatly clipped grass, a purple flower clutched between his palms.

“Phil.”

He spun around, and he must have heard something in Dan’s voice or saw something in his eyes because he scrambled to his feet.

“No — no, stay where you are!” He brandished the flower like a sword. Dan couldn’t help but step forward; it hurt to look at his crumbled face.

“Phil—”

“That’s far enough!” Phil shouted. His voice broke before the rest of him. He landed on his knees, flower dangling limply at his side.

Like a wave, Dan swept toward Phil and crashed with arms tight around the other boy’s shoulders. He could feel the dew and mud seeping through his jeans at the bend, but he held still.

“I fixed you,” said Phil quietly, into his neck. “I put everything back to normal, I swear, I don’t know why it didn’t—”

“Phil…” His hand found the short hairs at the other boy’s nape, slick with cool sweat and impossibly real.

Phil’s soft gasp almost masked his “I’m sorry.” And that was about all Dan could take. He curled his fingers around Phil’s shoulders and pushed until he was an arm’s length away — too far by these new standards, but the right distance to meet his gaze.

“Goddammit, Phil will you _listen_ to me.”

His blue eyes blinked, startled. A jostled tear slipped down his cheek. It occurred to Dan that he’d spent all his energy seeking out this magical boy, and none on what to tell him. Well, words had failed him often enough before.

Instead, Dan kissed him — because he didn’t know what to say, because Phil’s teeth were worrying a crater into his very pink bottom lip, because he wanted to. It was a peck to prove a point. The second of contact — Phil’s lips dry, his breath the product of one long fucking night — shot a not-insubstantial thrill from the nape of his neck all the way down to his tailbone, as if a wonky notch in his spinal column had been slotted back into place. If he’d been sure before, he would’ve sworn an oath now.

When he drew back, Phil’s laugh was a hitched, fragile thing. “Okay, I’m really lost now.” From the look of his face, kissing Dan had been a head-on collision.

Here, finally, were the right words. Dan rushed to get them out, tongue tripping in his haste. He took Phil’s face in both his hands.

“I was sleeping,” he said, “But I’m not anymore.”

Phil’s eyes flashed, hopeful now. This time, he met Dan halfway. There was a distinct sense of déjà vu to this second kiss. Dan could almost remember a dream, or a vision, superimposed on the here and now. A scene in transition, the sensation faded with each second that Phil’s lips moved on his. Soon his entire mind was stuffed full of just _this_ , what he’d been looking for all along — sharper, sloppier, eons beyond the dream.

“So what I’m getting from this,” said Phil, between kisses, “is you’re really not straight.”

Dan snorted. Yeah, that ship had sailed. He hadn’t even bothered to wave bon voyage.

“Shut up, faerie boy,” he said, shortly before taking on that noble mission himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Looks like we've only got the epilogue left to go! Please tell me what you think!


	19. Curtains (Epilogue)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Opening night.

Nothing compared to the toe-curling, stomach-churning, world-concussing thrill of opening night. Nothing, perhaps, except this.

“Jesus Phil, you’re gonna take off all my makeup.” Dan had been making such an honest effort too. In the ten minutes since they’d found this haven from the backstage chaos, Dan had definitively _not_ buried his fingers in the other boy’s ridiculous spiked hair, _not_ rucked up his ridiculous billowy shirt, and _not_ dislodged the safety pins holding his wings in place. Phil seemed to be taking no such care.

“But you look beautiful already,” he whined. Dan weighed the humiliation of asking Carrie for more foundation over the likelihood that this hickey would surface in the next two hours.

“Yeah, the forty watt stage lighting,” his breath hitched, “will beg to differ,” this train of thought was derailing fast, “when I’m up there looking like a ghost.”

Finally, Phil pulled back to place a chaste kiss on his cheek. He smirked. “Or like you got freaky with a disco ball.”

Instantly suspicious, Dan wiped his hand across his face, pulling away a generous amount of glitter. He shot Phil his best deadpan glare. “ _Really_.”

Then Chris threw back the curtain. His rogued cheeks dimpled and he cocked his hip in yellow tights. Dan, at least, had the modesty to look embarrassed.

“Curtains in ten, lads!” He bounced once in his silken slippers, exasperated and fond, before storming off. He shouted back to them: “Thou canst deflower each other at ye olde after party!”

“Method actors,” Dan grinned, still pink in the face.

* * *

“Tonight,” said Ms. Alexis, “is a night of magic.”

 The cast was circled behind closed velvet curtains, hands linked, unable and unwilling to tune out the buzz of the audience just beyond. It was bad luck to look, but Dan had reserved his parents and brother second row seats. It was bad luck to say “good luck,” and Dan would’ve punched anyone who tried. Maybe. His wrist hadn’t quite recovered from last time.

“Many have called Shakespeare a genius,” she said. “His words – poetry.” Dan smiled at Carrie, her hair done up in perfect ringlets. “His romances – timeless.” One of Analise’s eyes, lined with shimmering gold and alive with anticipation, winked at him. “But then again, he also loved his well-timed phallacism.” Chris raised both eyebrows, delighted. “So, clearly, his genius was not meant to be confined to a classroom.”

Here, Ms. Alexis looked toward the curtain, toward the waiting audience. “It was meant to be brought to life. It was meant to change minds. And hearts.” When her gaze roved around their circle, Dan was convinced her words were directed straight at him. He was convinced every person there felt the same.

“You’ve done that already, my dears. Now let’s make it bigger.”

* * *

Phil waited with him in the wings for the eternal minute between the curtain’s rise and his first entrance. He squeezed Dan’s hand.

“Nervous?”

His gut felt like a fifth year’s science fair volcano. “As if.”

* * *

When he and Carrie finished up the first act, they barely had time to embrace before a pale-faced Chris gripped his shoulder.

“Houston, we’ve got a major fucking problem.”

Their Puck, on in t-minus ten minutes, had locked himself in a bathroom stall.

“Phil.” Dan knocked on the door, mid-performance vigor now snaked through with nerves. The other boy’s quick, shaky breaths were audible. “Phil, open the door.”

“Don’t worry,” he said, going for breezy and getting category-four tropical storm. “You guys can go on without me. The Duke can read my lines.”

Dan flattened his palm on the stainless steel. “Please open the door, Phil. I’m not gonna force you onstage. Let’s just talk, okay?”

The next moment felt interminable. Yearning to check the time, Dan’s hand fidgeted for the phone that was currently tucked into his street clothes. Finally, the door caved in and Dan stumbled forward.

“Hi,” said Phil miserably. He was trying to make himself smaller, a difficult task for any six-foot-something teenager sporting wings twice the width of his body. “I really can’t do this.”

Dan took a deep breath. “You can.”

“No I _can’t_ , Dan!” Phil bit out, and more quietly, “This was a horrible idea. I’m a crap actor.”

“You’re not.”

“I don’t want to drag you down with me.”

“You’re _not._ ” Dan gripped him by the forearms. “Phil, you’re really not.”

Phil blinked. “What?”

He rapidly tried to compose his thoughts, kicking himself for every missed opportunity to do this earlier. “Look, I’m not saying you’re Meryl effing Streep but –” His exhale rushed sharply from his nose. “I don’t do false praise, okay? And I can be a judgmental little shit half the time. I realize that, which is why I generally keep my bitchy opinions to myself. So please listen to me when I say – zero censorship, full disclosure – that.”

Here came the kicker. It almost pained Dan’s past self to admit it.

“I couldn’t have dreamed a better Puck,” he said. Phil’s gaze flashed back and forth between his eyes. “This show would be shit without you, Phil – so are you gonna make your motherfucking cue or not?”

* * *

There’s this moment during a show that every performer knows, and fears, and craves. Usually, the second Dan stepped onstage, his nerves transformed into electric energy. His mind blanked out. His entire sense of self became irrelevant. He fed off the stirring shadows of the crowd and burned under the lights, allowed for these two-something hours to be larger than himself — a cog in a beautiful, breathing machine.

But then there was this moment. He was sat ramrod straight and still in a chair spray-painted gold. In identical chairs around him, Chris, Carrie, Analise, and others completed the final scene’s tableau. Their smiles were frozen on their faces; their hands were poised to applaud Pyramus and Thisbe’s tragic demise. All at once, Dan came back to himself. His back, used to hunching over a laptop, ached from holding this princely posture. A drop of sweaty makeup was inching ever closer to his eye. His tights were wedged neatly between his ass cheeks, and some asshole in the third row wouldn’t stop coughing. In his peripheral vision, Phil took center stage.

“ _If we shadows have offended_ _, think but this, and all is mended_ _._ ”

After the last line, they would all rise — stiff and ecstatic — and rush to line up by the footlights. They would take hands and fold at the waists and grin at each other. His smile for Phil would be different, and maybe a few people in the audience would pick up on that. They’d wonder if anything was going on between those two, the prince and the faerie. Maybe they’d smirk and maybe they’d laugh but Dan refused to stifle that particular smile — proud and smug and a little bit in love.

“ _That you have but slumber'd here_ _, while these visions did appear._ ”

Backstage, everyone would stumble over themselves to congratulate everyone else. In no special order, he’d embrace the Duke, forgetting he was kind of an ass, and Bottom, who — despite literally playing an ass — actually seemed like an upstanding dude. He’d glance wildly around for his friends and then they’d be everywhere: Carrie squeezing him around the waist from behind, Analise offering a fist pound-turned-hug, Chris ruffling his hair to cries of “I was wonderful! Wasn’t I wonderful?!”

“ _And this weak and idle theme,_ _no more yielding but a dream_.”

He’d leave Phil for last. Phil would be standing a little apart, breathless, his hands searching for pockets that weren’t there. Dan would sigh in exasperation. He would hold out a hand and they’d violently pull him into the fold. He’d smuggle him in the most obnoxious group hug of all time, if that’s what it took to finally prove that he was one of them, like it or not. 

“ _Gentles, do not reprehend_ _– if you pardon, we will mend_ _._ ”

Dan would jump into his street clothes backstage; modesty was a casualty of tech week and he had no use for it now, not when an army of potential ego-strokers could be awaiting his appearance. He wouldn’t bother taking off his makeup, but he would link his fingers through Phil’s as they stood before the stage door. Phil would raise his eyebrows, a question that Dan answered weeks ago. Dan tugging him through would be the only response needed.

“ _And, as I am an honest Puck_ _, if we have unearned luck_ _. Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,_ _we will make amends ere long_ _.”_

Dan’s family would be waiting on the other side. He would catch his mother’s gaze first on their linked hands and second on his eyes. She would smile, clutching flowers like one would hold a lamp — his father’s suggestion, purchased last-minute in the lobby. His brother would give him a two-fingered salute before sinking bored to a seat with phone in hand. Louise would pop up between them, giddy with praise, adding lip-gloss smears to the mess already on his face. Jack would be composed at her shoulder, and Dan would shake his hand.

“ _Else the Puck a liar call_ _.”_

When he’d take the bouquet — not purple, some innocuous color — and give it an appreciative sniff, his mother would sag with relief. She’d feel free to crack some joke about his eclectic audience, with Linden and Vince and the rest of the football team preoccupied with some post-show powwow at the back. Mrs. Lester would appear then, eyes red-rimmed and ready with hugs for them both. Their mothers would pointedly avoid eye contact, even alongside the most cordial of greetings. Phil would be charming and puzzling; Dan’s mom would be charmed and puzzled. Dan would make a mental note to use the word “bisexual” a few extra times this week, just to really drill it into her memory.  

“ _So, good night unto you all._ ”

They would do two more shows that weekend. After that, there’d be stolen kisses between classes and behind lockers. There would be snickers sometimes, a snide comment here and there, but that’d be a low buzzing compared to the joyful shout of _them._ Phil would graduate in the spring. He’d sail off to university to follow his bliss or whatever, leaving Dan behind. But maybe not forever. For now, for this one gasping moment, they had this:

“ _Give me your hands, if we be friends,_ _and Robin shall restore amends._ ”

The curtain fell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's a wrap! Thank you to everyone who stuck with this story for so long and to those who just started reading it. This is officially my longest finished work, and I am very proud of it. Any and all feedback is much appreciated. Thanks a ton <3

**Author's Note:**

> This work was originally posted on my Tumblr (under the same username). Thanks for reading!


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